Founder-Led, Revenue Up 187% in Three Years: Acclaim Autism Makes the Inc. 5000

PHILADELPHIA – Acclaim Autism, a seven-year-old ABA provider led by co-founder and president Jamie Turner, ranked No. 1,853 on Inc.’s 2026 list of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies in the U.S., with 187% revenue growth over three years.

Inc. measured growth from 2022 to 2025. The median company on the list grew 130% over the same stretch, and every honoree had to be private, for-profit, and independent, with at least $2 million in 2025 revenue. Acclaim also ranked No. 42 in the Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington metro area, No. 43 in Pennsylvania, and No. 204 in Inc.’s healthcare and medical category, according to a company release. Neither the public Inc. profile nor Acclaim’s Inc. 5000 announcement gives the company’s revenue in dollars.

Inc. measures revenue, and 187% over three years works out to a compound rate of about 42% a year. Co-founder Ryan Cox has described a different measure: asked by Healthcare Innovation in November 2024 how many families Acclaim served, Cox said about 175 and added, “We’re roughly doubling every year.”

“The goal was never growth for growth’s sake,” Turner said in the company’s Inc. 5000 announcement. Turner said the aim was to help more children and families get autism services.

How It Started

Turner and Cox started the company in Philadelphia in 2019. Cox is a former childhood educator, and Turner came from the nonprofit sector, Cox wrote in a December 2025 post for Appian, Acclaim’s software vendor. The two saw an industry buried in paperwork and organizations that put growth ahead of quality, Cox wrote. Acclaim began serving clients in March 2021.

The company started with in-home ABA for children and young people up to age 21, plus services in schools and the community, Healthcare Innovation reported. Acclaim began seeing patients at an early-childhood center for ages 2 to 5 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in March 2025, extended services to the Wilmington, Delaware, area in October 2025, and celebrated the grand opening of an expanded center in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on May 21, 2026. Acclaim now works in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and California, and its Great Place To Work profile, updated in July 2026, lists 135 U.S. employees.

Who Owns It

The public materials BreakingNewsABA reviewed identify Turner and Cox as founders but do not disclose their current ownership stakes, and the company’s Inc. listing names no owners. Turner is called the founder in the company’s Inc. 5000 announcement and a co-founder in an Appian conference listing.

In November 2024, Cox said Acclaim had grown “without outside private equity investment.” BreakingNewsABA found no later announcement of an outside investor.

The Intake Software

Acclaim has also built its own intake software. The company spent a year building a referral system before an outside consultant told Turner to “rip it out and start over,” TechInformed reported in July 2025. Acclaim rebuilt the system on Appian’s platform, using AI to read diagnosis reports from outside clinicians such as neurologists and pediatricians.

“We were able to get that six months down to about four days,” Turner told SiliconANGLE in April 2026, describing the company’s patient-onboarding process. The company says errors in reviewing those documents fell to about 5%. The figures come from Acclaim and its vendor and have not been independently verified; earlier Appian and press accounts put the cut in intake time at 83%.

The project won an Innovation Award at Appian’s 2026 customer conference, and Acclaim said in April that it plans to offer the system to other providers through a software spinoff. The April announcement did not give a launch date, pricing, or an ownership structure for the spinoff.

AT A GLANCE

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