The Mind Company, formerly known as Elevate Labs, is focused on making science-based apps and mobile games to improve mental wellness.
The company is focused on creating apps that help people with brain training and mindfulness, said Chandi Deitmer, senior puzzle editor, and Jen Huberty, chief science officer, in an interview with GamesBeat.
Fueled by research and conscious design, San Francisco-based The Mind Company empowers millions to sharpen their minds, cultivate calm, and unlock new knowledge every day.
This rebrand arrives at a critical cultural inflection point: Brain fog and cognitive overload are at record highs, with one-third of adults reporting persistent brain fog and nearly two-thirds experiencing some level of cognitive difficulty that interferes with daily life. It’s against this backdrop that The Mind Company is spearheading a mental fitness revolution, rooted in the peer-reviewed Cognitive Fitness Framework (CFF).
Just as the physical fitness revolution reshaped how we care for our bodies, The Mind Company is reimagining how we should care for our minds, championing small, achievable daily actions that add up to lasting strength. Every mind is different, but the goal is the same: greater clarity, resilience, and knowledge to live better every day.
“Mental fitness is this term that has never really been operationally defined, like mental health has been defined. And so people use it in an abstract way. The Mind Company is about mental fitness. Through Elevate and Balance, we looked matched it to a scientific framework that is how we define mental fitness. It’s about building knowledge, sharpness and calm, so that you can be more clear and resilient in your life,” said Huberty.
It measures outcomes to see if people are more resilient or they have balance. The Elevate app is really designed to sharpen people’s cognitive health in ways that are meant to be very applicable to day-to-day life. Balance is about meditation and sleep.
“We have over 40 games that are meant to help you build your vocabulary, practice mental math skills, and think about how to communicate more clearly and more concisely. We have a game that’s called tipping that is designed to help train you to go out into the world and be able to tip more effectively and more quickly,” Huberty said. “You can do that math when you’re at a restaurant, or we have one that is called Name Recall, and it’s about connecting names to faces, so that when you go to your next party or business event, you feel more able to remember the people that you meet.”
Since launching the Elevate brain training app in 2011, Elevate Labs has been a pioneer in the consumer digital health space. And now, with 80M+ downloads across its portfolio, The Mind Company is building the world’s most advanced ecosystem of mental fitness apps: award-winning, science-driven, and designed for real-world impact.
The Elevate app, winner of Apple’s App of the Year, targets cognitive abilities like communication, math, processing speed, and memory skills, while the Balance app, named Google’s Best App of 2021, guides users through personalized meditations for improved stress, sleep, focus, and mood. Following their unprecedented success, The Mind Company team is soon launching Spark: a first-of-its-kind puzzle app that transforms curiosity into daily learning, making lifelong knowledge collection both addictive and fun.
Elevate has been the flagship app over the years and it is a customized mental fitness app, said Deitmer. Balance is for meditation and sleep. The newest app coming is Spark, which is a series of puzzles that are intended to help you learn. For your brain to be considered happy, it really needs help in all those areas, Deitmer said.
Based on some surveys, the company saw improvements in cognitive skills for daily functioning and overall mental fitness. It has also produced gains in math and reading skills. The company is testing the app now to ensure a good outcome. It’s generally appealing to older folks.
“When you think about mental fitness, a 20-year-old may not care about their mental fitness. But when you get older and you realize your parents are passing away, friends are having trouble and dementia is a thing. Then you care,” Huberty said.
The new puzzle app is expected to debut before the end of the year, said Deitmer.
“Over the past decade, Elevate Labs has helped millions of people improve their minds, and it’s been incredible to see the impact our apps have on daily life,” said The Mind Company CEO Jesse Pickard, in a statement. “Reintroducing ourselves as The Mind Company is more than a new name; it’s a bold commitment to leading the field of mental fitness. We’re excited for the day when mental fitness is as universal as physical fitness, and our team, driven by real-world results, is proving that technology can do more than
entertain; it can strengthen the way we think, focus, and feel.”
In a world overwhelmed by endless scrolling, The Mind Company champions ‘positive screen time’—experiences that make every minute on your phone an investment in a sharper, healthier mind.
Users report significant benefits: In a survey of more than 4,200 adults who use Elevate, 81% reported feeling mentally sharper, and over half reported a reduction in mindless scrolling. In a survey of 3,700 adults who use Balance, 85% said their overall mental and emotional well-being improved, and 81% said they cope with anxiety better.
“With AI increasingly doing the heavy lifting of our thinking, people are right to be concerned about the long-term costs for mental sharpness, judgment, and resilience,” said Huberty. “But the solution isn’t to reject technology. It’s to use it more wisely. The Mind Company’s suite of apps demonstrates how tech can empower people to reclaim their focus, strengthen their core cognitive skills, and support their emotional well-being in lasting ways.”
Elevate started back in 2011. Today marks the introduction of The Mind Company, and with the launch of Spark slated for later this year, the company enters a new era: A bold new chapter in revolutionizing mental fitness, combating cognitive decline, and empowering every mind to thrive.
“From the very beginning, this is really about learning and making learning fun,” Deitmer said. “It’s been a very tricky balance because we want to build games that are truly games. We want people to open up this app and say, ‘Oh, I’m going to have fun.’ And that tricky thing is they actually learn. We’re keeping that under the radar. We’re keeping it squarely in mind, but we want people to come to these games genuinely to have a very good time.”
Huberty said while the company is aiming to help make measurable differences in people’s lives, it’s not purporting to be neurologists or psychiatrists.
“We’re not intending to replace any of those very key and necessary medical providers or the supports that are also out there,” said Huberty. “We’re not going to sit here and say we can cure dementia. We’re not a digital therapeutic,” which requires FDA approval.
Companies like DeepWell and Akili Interactive have obtained that approval, but it takes a long time and many companies in this space do not try because of the length of time required for it. Huberty is hopeful that approvals will start to happen faster in the broader market for digital therapeutics.
Huberty noted she is 50 and her mother has dementia. She wonders if there is something she can do to exercise her brain and make it more resilient.
“I think there is an opportunity to appeal to both people who are older and are aware of wanting to keep their minds as fresh as possible. And also we can play a fun game,” Huberty said.
Dietmer said she has worked at the company for three years and was hired to start writing crosswords for Elevate. She is one of a few game creators at the company.