Autism therapy in America has been stuck in a high-cost loop. Families are being told the only way forward is $50,000, $70,000 a year for intensive ABA. Many do it because they think they have no other option. Positive Development is here to prove there is. And now they have $51.5 million more reasons to do it.
The McLean-based company, co-founded by Chief Executive Officer Mike Suiters and Executive Chairman John Banta, is taking a model that blends developmental therapy, family engagement, and hard-nosed cost efficiency, and scaling it across the country. The Series C round was led by aMoon Fund, with returning believers B Capital and Flare Capital Partners back for another lap. Digitalis Ventures and Healthworx, CareFirst’s innovation arm, also doubled down. That’s not just capital. That’s validation from people who can smell a scalable healthcare model from a hundred yards away.
Positive Development’s weapon of choice is Developmental Relationship-Based Intervention, DRBI, a family-centered, play-driven therapy integrating speech, occupational, and mental health services. It’s delivered in-home or in community settings by integrated care teams, and it delivers outcomes at more than 50% less than the ABA norm. They call their platform Stanley, but make no mistake: this isn’t just back-office software. It’s a clinical matchmaker, a logistics command center, and an outcomes tracker rolled into one.
The scale is already serious, 23 service areas, eight states, roughly 1,200 families served, about 850 employees. But this funding is gasoline. The plan is to triple the client base, break into new states, deepen Medicaid and commercial payer partnerships, and sharpen the AI tools inside Stanley so clinicians and parents can work with richer, more predictive insights. That’s not a moonshot, even though aMoon Fund is involved, it’s a calculated expansion from a team that’s been building toward this moment since 2020.
And this is where the business lesson comes in. Healthcare’s most defensible growth stories rarely start with a shiny app or a marketing stunt. They start with a painful gap in the market, solved with a model that works in the real world, at a cost that stakeholders can actually stomach. That’s exactly what Mike Suiters, John Banta, and their leadership crew, from CTO Partha Boocha to Chief Clinical Officer Kate Rollins, have built.
If you think autism therapy is destined to stay expensive and inaccessible, Positive Development would like a word. And they just raised $51.5 million to make sure you hear it.
