NOCD, a virtual provider for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), has acquired Rebound Health, a virtual provider for trauma disorders.
The acquisition will help expand Rebound’s post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) care across the U.S., fueled by NOCD’s artificial-intelligence-powered platform called Noto. NOCD also announced that Noto, Latin for “to be known,” will serve as the new parent brand of both companies. NOCD plans to continue scaling its own practice nationwide.
NOCD, pronounced “no-CD,” was founded in 2015 and delivers more than 1 million OCD therapy sessions annually for anyone above the age of 5. The Noto infrastructure powers payer admin work, member identification and enrollment operations, and clinical training of NOCD’s network of more than 1,000 therapists. Noto will be used to help scale other virtual specialties for severe and overlooked conditions, starting with Rebound for PTSD and complex PTSD.
“Noto allows my co-founder, Dr. Erin Berenz, PhD, and me to scale a leading specialty therapy service for trauma survivors across the entire country,” Raeva Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Rebound Health, said in a press release. “As a trauma survivor who recovered by getting access to specialized treatment, I know firsthand the impact this makes.”
NOCD was founded in 2015 by Stephen Smith, who is also the company’s CEO. Smith has been on his own OCD journey for years, calling it a “very misunderstood yet prevalent psychiatric condition.” Millions of Americans have OCD, and the World Health Organization has ranked it as one of the 10 most debilitating conditions. Smith was first misdiagnosed for anxiety and depression. It wasn’t until he found a community of people online that it clicked.
After that, Smith found a specialist, and, after a seven-week waiting list and several hundred dollars out of pocket, Smith was diagnosed with OCD. He began exposure and response prevention (ERP) therapy and realized the condition can be managed, but not enough people are getting diagnosed properly in the first place. ERP therapy involves confronting intrusive thoughts and then learning how to respond without compulsive behavior, which reinforces a feeling of safety in the brain.
Even when patients get diagnosed, Smith realized, there aren’t enough specialists to treat them. A lack of support between visits was another challenge: “It was tough, because between sessions you’re on your own and it’s a chronic condition,” Smith recalled. “These are complex and often chronic conditions; you need to help people when their therapist isn’t available.”
Patients with OCD suffer significant disruptions to their daily life and are often underdiagnosed. The average duration of untreated illness is estimated to be 17 years. Nearly half of individuals with OCD have suicidal ideation.
Noto helps streamline partnerships with payers through its AI-powered revenue cycle management and processes for credentialing and enrolling new therapists. To identify members, Noto powers awareness campaigns, personalized community feeds, self-help tools and live events led by experts. For clinicians, Noto offers AI-enabled clinical interviewing for hiring, a specialized training experience, AI-assisted notetaking, member outreach, outcomes tracking and more.
“It’s given us the foundation to utilize AI agents in an accelerated matter,” Smith said. Though it’s primarily used for admin work today, it helps NOCD reinvest in care. “I think it’s been an incredible update in our business.”
Today, NOCD reaches 140 million commercial lives. Members do live virtual sessions with therapists and receive support tools between visits, including asynchronous messaging with the therapist and peer support. The company serves hundreds of thousands of members a year. NOCD has raised $90 million to date and is operating at about breakeven, per Smith.
The reason most of NOCD’s providers are under a W2-employed model is practical: “In these more complex areas of behavioral health you have to be able to more closely manage, just knowing the severity level of some of these members that you see.” Patients typically start therapy twice weekly, then step down to once weekly. Once they are at maintenance, they have check-in sessions periodically, per Smith.
In 2025, NOCD published the results of what it says is the first and largest study of its kind. The study followed more than 2,100 kids and teens over 13 virtual ERP therapy sessions. It found NOCD helped reduce OCD symptoms by 37%. More than half of participants showed significant reduction of symptoms after 13 sessions. The symptom reduction was stronger in mild to moderate cases, but severe cases still saw notable improvements (34% symptom reduction).
A separate peer-reviewed study looked at the effectiveness of peer support. NOCD members who engaged with a peer support intervention completed 30% more therapy hours on average and showed a statistically significant average reduction of 2.41 points on the OCD symptom severity scale, it found.
NOCD has been treating PTSD alongside OCD for three years, given the two conditions often overlap in its population. It has more than 100 licensed therapists nationwide with specialty training in prolonged exposure therapy for PTSD. The acquisition of Rebound was a natural fit, per Smith.
NOCD finds that by treating the root problem, whether that’s OCD or PTSD, other symptoms like anxiety or depression also improve. That said, NOCD does not offer medication management and refers out for that.