Havencrest Capital Management-backed Apara Autism Center is up for sale.
According to a report by Axios, Piper Sandler Co. is leading the auction of the company.
Apara Autism Center was founded in 2019 by former CEO Tyler Moore in partnership with Havencrest Capital Management. The company has been led by Kyle Seco as president and CEO since late 2023. It now has a presence in Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico and Texas and lists 17 locations on its website.
Behavioral Health Business has not verified this report. Several requests for comment have not been returned.
The company has grown de novo and via M&A. In 2021, it announced it had acquired Dallas, Texas-based Behavior Pioneers. A few years later, it announced it had acquired Autism Learning Collaborative (ALC) and Early Autism Services’ Missouri operations.
Over the years, the company’s focus evolved from opening centers to finding and retaining board-certified behavior analysts (BCBAs), the backbone of the autism therapy workforce. While Seco previously said that opening centers had become one of the “easier” things the company does, the key to growing quality autism therapy organizations centered on the sustainable development of the clinical workforce.
Havencrest originally sought to buy a platform company but failed to find one that met its standards for quality. So it started one, Seco said previously.
Autism therapy deals are picking up in 2026. However, most of the deals Behavioral Health Business has tracked so far this year are tuck-in or small, initial platform deals. LEARN Behavioral acquired Little Leaves Behavioral Services from FullBloom; Momentum Health Partners acquired Advanced Autism Center for Treatment; and Center for Social Dynamics acquired the Behavior Change Institute.
Scaled platforms have not sold at a similar clip. Perhaps the biggest autism therapy deal of the year so far is Webster Equity Partners’ sale of InBloom Autism Services to Elysium Management, the family office of Leon Black.