Psychedelic Start-Up Atai Life Sciences to Raise $100 Million in IPO, 2nd to List on Nasdaq

Atai Life Sciences, a biosciences company backed by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, announced it has submitted an S-1 filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and plans to raise $100 million in an initial public offering (IPO). So far, the Berlin-based company has raised an aggregate of $362.3 million in private investments. Underwriters include Credit Suisse, Citigroup, Cowen, and Berenberg.

Atai, which was founded in 2018, is a drug development platform designed to acquire, incubate, and develop psychedelic therapies to treat mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, and addiction. 

The company, which also has offices in New York and San Diego, has partnered with 14 other companies and tech firms that support its mission. For example, earlier this month, Atai announced it had acquired Psyber, a U.S.-based company that develops interventions for mental health disorders using EEG-based brain computer interface (BCI)-enabled digital therapeutics. The devices are designed to record electrical activity in the brain for real-time interpretation of emotional, behavioral, and mental states. 

In November, Thiel’s venture firm, Thiel Capital, invested $12 million in the company. “Atai’s great virtue is to take mental illness as seriously as we should have been taking all illness all along,” Thiel said in a statement. “The company’s most valuable asset is its sense of urgency.”

Atai also invested in another Thiel-backed pharmaceutical company, Compass Pathways, which has developed a synthetic version of psilocybin for mental health treatment. 

Atai shares will be sold on New York’s Nasdaq market under the symbol ATAI. A date for the IPO has yet to be set.