Investors and philanthropies are stepping in to fill the funding gap in the face of persistently high levels of anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions. They can act more flexibly, and with greater speed than public health systems. Often, they are also at the forefront of innovation, combining conventional means with emerging technologies to meaningfully improve the operating system for mental health. This year's REAL Summit in London, which took place on 3 June 2026, brought a clear sense that the volume of investable assets is clearly growing in the mental health space. The hosting organisation’s ambition to catalyse 10 billion USD investment into mental health by 2030 served as a point of reference. In the opening session, Natacha Muller and Diana Chao convincingly stressed that reaching those levels of funding require high-impact initiatives that mobilise the full capital stack. In addition, a sophisticated financial infrastructure Is needed to align standards, similar to the one that was developed in climate finance.

NeuroCentury’s Paweł Świeboda spoke in the session on the “Future of the Mind: Investing in Cognitive Heath for Human and Economic Flourishing”, with Emily Wheeler, Kristina Durcakova and Pierluigi Sacco. The session focused on how brain capital can address the misalignment of economic structures. The latter were not designed to be brain-friendly to start with and do not course-correct when technology imposes unbearable pressures on our cognition. Two discussion explored two ways to address this situation: a more top-down, where a conscious effort is made to change the incentive structure, or a top-down one, where brain-positive spaces are built in cities or in the workplace, driven by individual and community action.