Spirit Tech 3.0: Can We Meet the Moment?

An exploration of the inflection points that will reshape the Spirit Tech landscape

Spirit Tech: Field Notes from the Edge is a newsletter written by members of the Spirit Tech Collective (STC). Inspired by the Climate Tech movement, STC’s mission is to 50x the funding and talent flowing into the Spirit Tech sector over the next 10 years, paving the way for greater collective wisdom and flourishing. Our aim with this newsletter is to share the synthesis of our research for feedback as we collectively cultivate the soil to usher in the next wave of Spirit Tech innovation.

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While the idea of using technology for spiritual growth may feel contradictory, the concept of spiritual technology isn’t new. Spiritual technologies have been around for thousands of years. Rooted in wisdom traditions, practices, contemplative practices, ritual, and community, these ancient technologies have supported millions go deeper within, grow in awareness and awaken.

Over the past two decades, millions have turned to digital technologies to help them meditate, journal, and explore spiritual content. This most recent wave of modern spiritual technologies made spiritual practice more accessible than ever. It guided many to take initial steps into a spiritual exploration. But exploration is not the same as deepening.

Most Spirit Tech products today calm or inform. Very few transform. Despite the proliferation of mindfulness apps, loneliness, anxiety, and spiritual yearning are increasing.

In our first Substack, we highlighted the growing base of research suggesting that transformative spiritual development is one of the most overlooked levers for addressing the mental health crisis, climate change, and other systemic challenges plaguing our society. This underscores the urgency to build tools that make deep spiritual transformation more accessible at scale.

A new wave of Spirit Tech is emerging. Advances in generative AI, real-time interoceptive sensing, the science of awakening, and subtle state-shifting technologies are opening up entirely new possibilities. For the first time ever, we have the technology to guide people into the depth of spiritual practice and experience at scale.

The Spirit Tech sector is at an inflection point.
The question is: can we meet the moment?

In this article, we dive into the significance of this moment and lay out our vision for Spirit Tech 3.0. We highlight the next wave of technologies and products that will grow the sectors impact and market potential. We close by briefly discussing what it will take to meet this moment and prepare the fertile soil for Spirit Tech 3.0, a topic we will explore much more in future newsletters. Our intention is to inspire founders, funders, and talent to look beyond where the sector is today and open to the vastness of the Spirit Tech opportunity that lies ahead of us. But first, let’s take a moment to look back at how Spirit Tech 1.0 and 2.0 got us here.

Reader ask: We’d love your feedback. What are we missing? Do you see a different future?

How we got here: Spirit Tech 1.0 & 2.0

The seeds of Spirit Tech 1.0 were planted in the 1960s, in the broader context of the cultural human potential movement. Interest in Eastern philosophy, psychedelics, and the mind-body connection was growing, sparking a curiosity about how science and technology could compliment spirituality. By the mid-1970s, dozens of alpha wave EEG biofeedback monitors were available for home use. In the 1980s, GSR biofeedback units gained traction and even won consumer design awards. Spiritual teachers started using cassette tapes to support their students with practice.

These early devices showed promise, but were mostly seen as novelties. The tech was bulky, the science was early, and the user experience was clunky. These weren’t 10x products. They sparked curiosity and laid important groundwork for what came next, but they didn’t create real demand.

Spirit Tech 2.0 was fueled by the rise of the internet and the creator economy. Apps like Calm and Headspace brought meditation into the mainstream, reaching over 100 million users. The YouVersion Bible app personalizes Scripture for more than 940 million users.

As Sadguru said in a recent podcast: “This is the very first time we have a real opportunity to transform human beings and our society. We (spiritual teachers) never before had an opportunity to touch 1 billion people at once”

The Spirit Tech 2.0 movement has made it easier for people to engage with spiritual practices and weave them into daily life. It has opened the door to cross-traditional exploration, breaking down the boundaries of monolithic religion and has brought many back to a spiritual path. Since the early 90’s, the number of U.S. adults identifying as "spiritual but not religious" (SBNR) rose from 6% in 1991, to 25-30% by 2021. In 2012, only 1.9% of U.S. adults had tried at least one mindfulness practice in the past 12-months. By 2021, that number had jumped to 14%.

While these tools reached a wide audience, they often lacked depth. Many modern forms of mindfulness were repackaged as wellness or productivity hacks, stripped from their roots in tradition, community, and lineage. In the process, they lost much of their transformative potential. The next wave of neurotech gadgets from the Spirit Tech 1.0 era hit the consumer market, but mostly reinforced the same trend as our scientific understanding of deep spiritual practice has remained limited. For anyone interested in exploring the dangers of the modern mindfulness movement, ‘Why Mindfulness Isn’t Enough’ by the Emerald is one of my all time favorites.

Another challenge of Spirit Tech 2.0 has been the one-size-fits-all approach that doesn't reflect the diversity of human needs and contexts. There is an overwhelming amount of spiritual content online with limited guidance or personalization. Seekers are left to piece together their path across apps and platforms, often without any support. As a result, many stay in the shallow end, unsure how to go deeper. Spiritual confusion and burnout is common.

Even more concerning, the most visible content often comes from influencers posing as spiritual teachers. They lack proper initiation, training, and often optimize for clicks rather than wisdom. This erodes trust and many turn away from spirituality altogether.

Despite its limitations, Spirit Tech 2.0 played a key role in raising awareness and expanding the market for spiritual practices. It had a real impact on millions of lives. It surfaced a deeper hunger and sparked more spiritual yearning than we’ve seen in decades, especially among Gen Z. A 2023 study found that 77% of Americans say they want to grow spiritually, and 44% say that desire has increased since the pandemic.

This yearning is fueling interest in spirituality beyond religion and beyond singular modalities like meditation. More people are mixing traditions and building spiritual stacks suited for their needs. Google Trends over the past 5-years shows that interest in broader "spirituality" topics is increasing relative to searches for meditation.

People don’t just want a five-minute meditation. They’re looking for initiation, deepening, and integration. Spirit Tech 2.0 hasn’t filled that gap. Instead, many are turning to spiritual retreats. Spiritual tourism is growing 15 to 20 percent each year, but it remains inaccessible to most. People are craving depth that can meet them where they are. In their home. In their lives.

In a time of AI acceleration, political instability, and growing division, the spiritual hunger for deeper meaning and inner grounding will continue to grow quickly.

Spirit Tech 3.0: The Inflection Point

Over the next 1–2 years, and accelerating over the next decade, we will see a new wave of innovation that will reshape how we interact with Spirit Tech products and expand the market. Here are four key technological trends I am tracking:

AI-Driven, Hyper-Personalization

Let’s start with the obvious. Emotional support and therapy are already top use cases for chatGPT. Some studies even suggest AI is outperforming human therapists in certain structured settings. This highlights the tremendous opportunity, and as a recent Rolling Stone article highlights, comes with incredible risk.

Many teams are working on more skillful solutions and training LLM models based on specific traditions or spiritual frameworks with the aim to bring “Buddha” and “Jesus” into our pockets. Spiritual teachers like Shinzen Young and Deepak Chopra are building digital companions rooted in their teachings and frameworks. AI journals like Untold give users a set of diverse personalized spiritual perspectives as overlays to their journal entries. Three years ago, the prospect of delivering in-the-moment, wisdom-rooted guidance tailored to someone’s unique path seemed completely out of reach. Now the possibilities are endless.

The most exciting opportunity being actively pursued by Sol and several other teams, is a personalized spiritual companion. One that understands your context, your developmental stage, your aspirations, and curates a path forward using practices from across traditions and disciplines. This kind of non-affiliated, democratized spiritual coach wouldn't just deliver content. It would offer personalized pointing-out instruction based on where you are and invite you to go deeper. A multi-modal spiritual stack that evolves with you, all delivered through a single tool.

As my friend Raiya Kind, the AI Alchemist at Google X, shared with me recently: “AI offers a profound opportunity for humanity’s awakening, serving as an infinitely responsive mirror that reflects our stories, beliefs, and feelings, and deepens our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.”

The Science of Awakening

Over the past two decades, there has been a surge in scientific research on meditation helping to drive mainstream adoption of mindfulness.

Much of this research has focused on stress reduction, mood, and productivity, often centered around mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). MBSR has been a breakthrough. It standardized meditation in a way that made it accessible to both science and the public. It laid the foundation for this entire movement and was a key driver of the Spirit Tech 2.0 success.

Sara Lazar was one of the first researchers to go beyond mindfulness and publish evidence showing the impact of long-term meditation practice on the cortical thickness in the brain. Now a growing number of researchers and labs at top academic institutions are building on her foundation, going beyond mindfulness, and exploring the physiology of deep spiritual practice and end-point states like samadhi, full absorption and cessation. A few examples of the exciting latest research:

• Harvard’s Advanced Meditation Research Program recently published papers on how deep Jhana mediations states impact the brain connectivity, reorganization, and brain mode dynamics

• Michael Levin’s work at Tufts is pioneering the science of bioelectric fields, challenging mainstream views of intelligence and expanding our understanding of how fields influence life

• The Institute of Advanced Consciousness Studies (IACS) is about to publish a paper on how heart-evoked potentials can be the first physiological sign of meditative depth, suggesting that the heart leads the brain in deep meditation

• The Minimal Phenomenal Experience (MPE) Project team published an influential study showing that deep meditation can shift the minds predictive patterns and boost neuroplasticity.

This shift in research focus will lay the foundation for a new generation of neurofeedback and neurostimulation technology that will allow us to explore the full arc of spiritual development. The focus will no longer simply be about reducing stress, it will be about stabilizing long-term state shifts of equanimity, compassion, and clarity that can dramatically decrease our suffering.

But we’re still early. According to the team at Harvard, only 0.001% of funding goes to this line of research. That’s starting to change. The Consciousness Foundation has made funding the ‘Science of Awakening’ their initial focus. Funders like Emerald Gate, The Subtle Energy Funders Collective, and the EPRC are continuously raising awareness and bringing new sources of funding into this research. As the cultural relevance and understanding of deep practice and awakening grows, and the connection to big societal challenges like mental health and climate becomes more clear, funding into science will follow.

The Next Wave of Interoception (Sensing) Tools

One of the core benefits of spiritual development is increased interoception: the ability to feel and work with your internal state in real time. You begin to notice the trigger and contraction as it arises. You learn to stay present with it rather than react. This is where deep practice lives, and the most profound impact of spiritual growth can be felt. In the thick of life. In stress, conflict, and moments of pressure. The capacity to return to presence again and again.

So far, we haven’t had the technology to support people in these moments. Current Spirit Tech solutions help on the cushion, not in the fire. Yes, we have wearables tracking HRV, breath, temperature, EEG, and soon hormone levels. But we haven’t seen a breakthrough in tools that reflect real-time emotional and physiological shifts in a way that’s actionable. That’s about to change.

Neurable is developing novel software to extrapolate full-brain EEG using just a few sensors paving the way for brainwave data to be usable from everyday devices. Apple may soon finally add EEG capabilities to the AirPods. Openwater is pushing the edge of portable neuroimaging with holographic technology so advanced that it sounds like science fiction. Digital phenotyping tools are rapidly improving at tracking emotional and mental states in real time using passive signals like voice tone, facial expression, and mobile interaction patterns.

Further out on the frontier, devices like Bio-Well claim to measure the human biofield and detect patterns in energetic balance using specialized GDV sensors. Random number generators (RNGs), used in consciousness research for decades, appear to respond to changes in collective field coherence. The latest research strongly suggests that the output from the RNGs become less random during moments of shared emotional or mental focus, such as global meditations or major world events. Wyrd is leading the way in embedding RNGs into lamps and other everyday devices to detect shifts in field coherence. Others are following suit, experimenting with integrating RNGs into VR headsets and other devices to track changes in states of consciousness.

Multiple innovation paths are converging, and a breakthrough in a user-friendly, real-time interoception technology feels close. We have come a long way in tracking our physical health. Will tracking our spiritual and energetic health be the next natural evolution?

Side note: Meditation was ‘woo’ less than 20-years ago. Now it’s mainstream and we have multiple meditation unicorns. As the ‘woo’ window widens and field-based technologies continue to advance and gain conceptual validation from researchers like Michael Levin, we will open the door to a new category of innovation. These field-based and coherence technologies hold the potential to expand how we understand layers of intelligence, deepen our capacity for intuition, transform how we interact with AI, and change how we relate to one another in community. They have the potential to take Group Flow technology, aimed to bring us together in a deeper way, to an entirely new level. We are only beginning to glimpse what’s possible when sensing moves from individual insight to collective awareness. It’s too early to call this a standalone inflection point, but in three years when I revisit this article, I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the one we are all most excited about.

Non-intrusive Modulation of States

Psychedelics have played a major role in opening people to altered and mystical states. In the right context, they can catalyze profound shifts in consciousness. For many, a deep psychedelic experience was the start of their spiritual path. Psychedelics will continue to support the healing and spiritual growth for many. But psychedelics aren't for everyone. And for now, they aren’t legal outside of tightly regulated therapeutic settings in most countries.

In Spirit Tech 2.0, we saw early experiments with technodelics: a tech-first approach to inducing non-ordinary states that can motivate and spark deeper spiritual journeys. Technologies like SoundSelf have shown it's possible to trigger ego-dissolution using only immersive sound and visuals. Now, new approaches to non-intrusive state modulation are entering the market, expanding what's possible without substances.

After a decade of hype, transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS), which delivers precise stimulation to specific brain regions, is nearing commercial launch. I participated in a meditation study using tFUS a few years ago and it remains the most powerful Spirit Tech experience I’ve had.

While I’m skeptical about the mainstream potential of AR/VR due to hardware limitations, experiences like Anuma prove that the right immersive experience can evoke awe and, more importantly, a felt sense of interconnection often experienced in psychedelic ceremonies. At some point soon, someone will build AR-based 'Aya goggles' that will help people visualize the ‘real’ experience of interconnection with each other and with nature in a more tangible way.

Looking a bit further out, we may soon see a new wave of personalized modulators designed to shift our moment-to-moment state, helping us build our capacity to stay present with difficult emotions and contractions. Designer nootropics, entheogenic stacks, and biofield or hormone modulators will become increasingly targeted to our physiological patterns. Building on the early research from Cognigenics, we may even reach the point where short-term gene edits enable temporary shifts into greater openness and clarity.

In a recent podcast, Dor Konforty, founder of The Awakening Fund and a close collaborator, captured the potential of this technology incredibly well: “The technologies that I'm most excited about are ones that can, in ever increasing sophistication, target particular structures of the brain, whether it's by depositing energy in very precise locations or by tweaking subtle and precise amino acids, to create conditions that make the mind less anxious and more prime for deep in-the-moment restructuring that meditation often makes possible. It’s not about smoothing the ride. It’s about It about giving us a bit more capacity to stay with what is.”

The 10x product potential

The 10x breakthrough will be products that combine all of these inflection points, bringing together real-time sensing, AI, and neuromodulation. The team at Lief, for example, is already layering AI on top of their real-time HRV tracker to offer discreet, in-the-moment, AI-driven biofeedback.

Within three years, I believe we will see the first major Spirit Tech 3.0 product capable of delivering real spiritual depth at scale. It will integrate precise neurofeedback and neurostimulation with advanced AI coaching to guide people into absorption states linked to self-transcendence and mystical experience. It will respond to your real-time state with instruction and, when needed, provide subtle neuromodulation support. We’re not far off. Sanmai is already testing its ultrasound devices in meditation retreats with promising results. Cofounder and teacher Shinzen Young is building an AI guide based on his Unified Mindfulness system. In a recent conversation, he told me that he believes it could replicate his own instruction within six months. The combination of feedback, stimulation, and adaptive guidance will support spiritual practitioners shorten the path to deeper, transformational states of awareness.

The larger market opportunity, however, lies in tools that help people show up better in everyday life. Products that start with real-world challenges and gently lead toward self-inquiry and deeper spiritual development. Below is an illustrative example of what could be possible. It may sound futuristic, but the core technologies already exist. At the pace we are moving, I believe we’ll see early versions of these type of products by 2030 and real market adoption soon after.

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Illustrative Example: Bond

Reader note: while this is a hypothetical, futuristic example, I’ve added links to highlight existing tech and scientific research that makes it more grounded in where we are today.

What if an AI wearable could sense subtle shifts in your breath, heart rhythm, or bio-photon emission and guide you out of a conflict state?

You and your partner are mid-argument. Defensive tones. Rising tension. Neither of you really hearing the other. You both feel alone in it again.

You’re both wearing Bond, a lightweight AI-based wearable (OpenAI) designed to support couples in moments of conflict. It rests gently on your chest and tracks micro-changes in breath, heart rate variability (Lief), voice tone (Sonde), biophoton and heat emissions (HeartMath, Dr. Beverly Rubik), micro-movements, and energetic coherence between you and your partner (Wyrd).

When Bond senses a strong trigger, it sends a gentle pulse over your heart. Your partner receives the same cue, along with a discreet message: “Your partner may be activated. Can you offer space?”

If both of you opt in, Bond initiates a co-regulation practice tailored to your relationship history. It guides you through synchronized breathing and delivers gentle neuromodulation using sound (Endel), vibration, and frequency (One Device) to return you both to baseline. Your nervous systems settle. The emotional charge drops. You reconnect through presence.

As the moment softens, Bond offers a prompt to guide a short relational repair session. If you both opt in, it listens in discreetly to help identify core patterns and guide you toward resolution.

Over time, Bond tracks your journey. It maps how often conflict arises, how quickly you return to connection, and how long you stay in reactive states. The data is yours alone. A private Freedom Log captures consistent relational themes and supports you in working with them when you have time for deeper reflection. Drawing from cross-traditional practices, it builds a custom spiritual stack to help you integrate what’s emerging (Sol). You start to feel and see the change in how you relate. As trust grows, Bond begins to guide you deeper into your spiritual path. Gently, at your own pace.

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We can extrapolate this example to many use cases. In boardrooms, this type of technology can help leaders make better decisions and improve bottom line results. In schools, it could help children feel safer, more seen, and better able to understand themselves. In hospitals and therapeutic settings, it could support caregivers stay grounded and attuned, even in the most intense moments. Wherever presence and human connection matter, the new wave of Spirit Tech can help us show up with more awareness, compassion, and coherence. Every moment becomes an invitation to grow, a view held by many spiritual traditions.

Each use case will likely require its own product, designed for the nuance of that setting and the specific emotional and the needs of that group. These software layers will be integrated into a few core hardware platforms. To me, this is the big Spirit Tech market opportunity. A set of trojan horse products that meets people where they are, help them in their day-to-day challenges and bring them into a deeper journey.

Cultivating the Fertile Soil for Spirit Tech 3.0

To briefly summarize where we are in the narrative: Spirit Tech 1.0 sparked curiosity and laid the foundation for integrating modern tech with ancient spiritual practices. Spirit Tech 2.0 focused on access and scale, bringing these practices to the mainstream. Spirit Tech 3.0 will be about precision and personalization, using real-time interoception to guide people into deeper transformation at scale.

We are at an inflection point. ChatGPT is already the most widely used therapist in history. How we relate with Spirit Tech is already changing. If you’re still reading, I hope you feel the significance of the moment. And if parts of the previous section made you cringe, I get it. It will be important to get this right.

Back to the original question: can we meet this moment?

Spirit Tech 3.0 will require a fertile soil. An ecosystem that supports spiritually aligned, ethical innovation. Right now, much of that infrastructure is missing.

Aligned funding is one of the biggest gaps. Traditional venture models prioritize speed and returns, which doesn’t match the pace or integrity of spiritual development. It will be important to avoid pushing people faster than they are ready to go. We can invite. To open the door, not force it. It will be important for companies to balance growth with integrity and allow for emergence within structure. To have time to build trust. In Spirit Tech, trust will become the most important asset. Right now, many Spirit Tech founders are hesitant to raise VC money as the growth at all costs mindset and systemic incentives don’t align.

Is it possible to develop clear standards for Spirit Tech innovation that invites disruptive capital without compromising principles that cultivate safety for people to go deep? What would a spiritually aligned version of the YC SAFE look like? Are there alternative pathways for spiritually aligned innovation that can be opened?

The broader narrative is another missing piece. Deep spiritual development and self-inquiry are still largely framed within the context of religion. As spiritual practices have entered mainstream culture, many have been stripped of the worldviews and metaphysical frameworks that once gave them depth and coherence. As mentioned, our first Substack points to the growing body of research showing that spiritual development is one of the most overlooked tools for systemic change. But mainstream culture doesn’t see it that way.

This narrative gap is one reason the Spirit Tech market remains small, limiting the pace of innovation. Spirit Tech 2.0 helped create a market, but most of it flows through the B2C wellness category. How can we construct a narrative for companies, schools, hospitals, and public institutions to prioritize spiritual development? As the technology improves, can we prove that Spirit Tech and spiritual development improves bottom line results? Who are the early adopters in the corporate world willing to experiment with a spiritually driven culture and org design and author the spiritual version of No Rules Rules?

As these case studies get built over the next decade, the market will open up. Spirit Tech has the potential to reshape the $50 billion personal growth industry, the $70 billion corporate wellness space, and the $7 trillion global wellness economy.

And lastly, how do we embed wisdom keepers at the center of innovation, with real governance and resources, to protect spiritual integrity and ethics? Sanmai is a great example. It’s a true partnership between an entrepreneur and a respected spiritual teacher, Shinzen Young. They’ve raised significant VC capital as a public benefit corporation (PBC) without compromising the mission. How do we make collaborations like this the norm, or even right to play in the sector? How can we build enough trust at the ecosystem-level to invite more wisdom teachers into shaping both the future of Spirit Tech, and tech innovation more broadly?

At the Spirit Tech Collective (STC), these are all questions guiding our work. They are big decade-long inquires. Together with the many other ecosystem builders in the Spirit Tech and human flourishing sectors, our plan is to lay the foundation brick by brick and cultivate a fertile garden bed for spiritual innovation to flourish. We aim to play our role in creating the infrastructure rails that Spirit Tech 3.0 deserves. We will expand much more on the how in future newsletters.

Interested in Getting Involved?

We are launching a Spirit Tech Network, a dedicated space for founders, funders, talent, researchers, and leaders who are passionate about how technology can advance spiritual health and development. Our intention is to create a space for connection, collaboration, and build a trusted ecosystem network. If you are interested in joining, we invite you to fill out this quick 2-minute form to add your name to our list and share ideas for what would be most helpful to you as we co-create this community.

We are also in the early stages of designing a Spirit Tech Venture Builder to bring validated deep spiritual technologies to market. We’re looking to connect with founders interested in building in the sector, as well as Venture Partners who want to help shape and support the Venture Builder itself. If that’s you, please drop a comment with your email and LinkedIn profile so we can follow up.