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SAGE Market Case Snapshot

A deep practice, a simple way in

In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn began teaching mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. At its core, mindfulness is a deep and broad way of living, rooted in Buddhist practice. Kabat-Zinn offered mindfulness as stress reduction, in a program later named Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). He later wrote that "stress reduction seemed ideal, since pretty much everybody can relate to that instinctively." He presented the practice without "ever using the word 'dharma' or invoking Buddhist thought or authority."

Stress was the entry point. Many participants found something larger. One participant told him, "This isn't stress reduction. This is my whole life!"

MBSR is now offered in more than 700 hospitals, clinics, and programs, and his books are published in more than 45 languages. In our view, mindfulness spread further than any practice of its kind in our lifetime.

We see SAGE in the same position. In our experience, the practice reshapes how people experience their whole lives. A practice that changes everything is hard to sell, so this round includes finding the clearest way in.

Where people and investors are spending

  • Mental health has been the top-funded clinical area in US digital health for seven straight years, through mid-2026 (Rock Health). Total digital health funding reached $14.2 billion in 2025.
  • Consumers pay for help with stress and anxiety at scale. Calm reports 4 million or more paying members.
  • 40% of US Gen Z say they are "almost always stressed," against 23% of all respondents (McKinsey, 2025).
  • Disconnection is rising too. In 2025, 54% of US adults felt isolated at least some of the time, and 62% called societal division a significant source of stress (American Psychological Association).

Stress and anxiety are where the proven consumer spending sits today. Connection and conflict show a large need, with few products serving it at scale.

What we haven't found anyone addressing

Many products address stress and anxiety, through meditation, breathing, sleep, therapy, and AI coaching. We haven't found a product that works through language.

We see language as one of the primary building blocks of experience. We tend to make the meaning of what happens to us in words, often silently. Research has been pointing toward language for decades:

  • Appraisal theory holds that our emotions arise from how we interpret events (Lazarus, 1991).
  • Putting feelings into words reduced activity in the brain's alarm center, the amygdala (Lieberman and colleagues, 2007).
  • In expressive writing studies, the people whose language changed benefited most (Pennebaker and colleagues).
  • A single grammatical choice changed how much blame people assigned and what they remembered (Fausey and Boroditsky, 2010).
  • In disagreements, sharing personal experience earned more respect than sharing facts (Kubin and colleagues, 2021, PNAS).

The science of language and experience is well developed. We haven't found a mass-market product that turns the science into an everyday practice, and SAGE is built to fill that gap.

The practice SAGE offers

SAGE, short for Subjective Awareness and Genuine Expression, coaches people in inside-out language. Outside-in language places the cause of an experience outside the speaker: "He made me angry," or "The meeting was a total waste of time." Inside-out language places the cause where the meaning is made: "I'm angering myself because of how I'm perceiving him," or "I didn't find value in the meeting."

The point is not teaching people to speak differently. The language is the mechanism. Through the practice, people report moving from recipients of life to authors of their experience, with significantly higher felt inner agency and deeper connection with themselves.

SAGE draws on fifty years of practice with thousands of people, first by psychologist John Weir and his wife, Joyce, and then by psychotherapist Jake Eagle and his wife, Hannah. People practicing the language have reported steadier responses to stress and anxiety, and closer connection, for decades. SAGE has not yet had a controlled study. The pilot in this round is the first formal test.

The Waking Point

We call the moment when meaning is still forming the Waking Point: the instant between something happening and our settling on what it means. Most approaches work after meaning has been made, through reflection, reframing, or therapy. SAGE's linguistic model works at the Waking Point.

Shaping a sentence inside-out makes people aware of the meaning they're assigning to an event, while they're assigning it. In that moment, they can make the meaning with agency, instead of on autopilot. We see the Waking Point as where SAGE differs most from other approaches.

Emotion research supports the importance of timing. In James Gross's process model of emotion regulation, strategies that work early, such as reappraising a situation, tend to work better than strategies used after an emotion is under way, such as suppressing it. Reappraisal has been linked to more positive emotion and better well-being, and suppression to worse (Gross, 1998; Gross and John, 2003).

Why language may be the most engaging practice

Most practices ask for time set aside: a meditation session, a breathing exercise, a therapy hour. Language is already happening, in every word we think, speak, and write. The practice goes wherever a person goes, all day.

Through the practice itself, people are using a level of awareness we haven't found any other practice asking for. Each sentence is a moment of choosing how to make meaning.

Why now

For fifty years, the practice spread person to person, one small group at a time. Nothing could deliver the practice at scale without a teacher in the room. AI now can. The SAGE Companion listens to what a person types or speaks, maps their language, and coaches them into inside-out language, at any hour.

What this round decides

This round builds the subscription product and puts the product with the partners ready to use the app. The round also tests the best place for SAGE to enter the market. Stress and anxiety are the proven market. Connection and conflict are the larger gap, and the area where SAGE works most distinctly. We intend to learn from real users which entry draws people in, the way stress reduction opened the door to mindfulness.

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