Most of the ridiculous "young computer whiz" success stories I've seen would be more honestly described as "young kid with mediocre coding skills gets lucky", or "young kid with successful parents is recipient of favor thanks to father".
The more likely reason is that there is something these are capable of that hasn't yet been found out by the public, which would make the government and the companies who make these devices look very bad if it became public information.
Every time I hear a sob story about how it's hard to find a job as a "self taught developer", then find out that the person telling the story just started "self-teaching" a year ago...
What I'm getting from everything you're saying, is this...
"We're carefully avoiding anything that might make us comply with regulations that could potentially get in the way of our harvesting of your thoughts and mental health status"
Storing mental health data in the cloud with a random "startup" type company sounds like it would cause more anxiety than the app could possibly solve. If it doesn't, it should.
What an awful idea. I can't help but wonder what their goal is with the data they're collecting via this app.