Digital therapeutics pioneer Akili Interactive Labs goes public, raising $150M+; trades down 49% first day

Akili Inter­ac­tive is the lat­est com­pa­ny to go pub­lic via SPAC deal (Boston Busi­ness Journal):

Boston’s Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs Inc. is the lat­est Mass­a­chu­setts-based com­pa­ny to go pub­lic after com­plet­ing a reverse merg­er — in a year of mar­ket tur­moil that saw few local firms pass­ing the thresh­old between pri­vate and pub­lic status.

Shares of Akili start­ed trad­ing on Mon­day on the Nas­daq Cap­i­tal Mar­ket under the new tick­er sym­bol “AKLI” after the com­pa­ny com­plet­ed its pre­vi­ous­ly announced reverse merg­er with Social Cap­i­tal Suvret­ta Hold­ings Corp. I (Nas­daq: DNAA), a spe­cial pur­pose acqui­si­tion com­pa­ny, or SPAC.

From the trans­ac­tion, Akili raised more than $163 mil­lion before expens­es, rough­ly equal to the amount of Pri­vate Invest­ment in Pub­lic Equi­ty, or PIPE — the upfront invest­ment from a select group of accred­it­ed investors in most SPAC deals.

That’s con­sid­er­ably less than the pro­ject­ed $412 mil­lion when the merg­er plan was first announced, which also includ­ed addi­tion­al shares planned to be sold … With the PIPE mon­ey, Shanbhag says Akili can launch and scale Endeav­or­Rx in the fourth quar­ter of this year, and sup­port its part­ner­ship with Shiono­gi in Japan.

The Announcement:

Dig­i­tal Med­i­cine Leader Akili to List on Nas­daq Fol­low­ing Suc­cess­ful Busi­ness Com­bi­na­tion with Social Cap­i­tal Suvret­ta Hold­ings Corp. I (press release):

Akili, a lead­ing dig­i­tal med­i­cine com­pa­ny, today com­plet­ed its pre­vi­ous­ly announced busi­ness com­bi­na­tion with Social Cap­i­tal Suvret­ta Hold­ings Corp. I (“SCS”) (Nas­daq: DNAA), a pub­licly trad­ed spe­cial pur­pose acqui­si­tion com­pa­ny. The new­ly formed com­pa­ny, Akili, Inc. (“Akili”), is expect­ed to start trad­ing on The Nas­daq Cap­i­tal Mar­ket (“Nas­daq”) under the new tick­er sym­bol “AKLI” on August 22, 2022.

Akili raised more than $163 mil­lion from the trans­ac­tion, before deduct­ing trans­ac­tion expens­es and advi­so­ry fees, which, togeth­er with cash on hand, the com­pa­ny expects will be suf­fi­cient to fund at least 24 months of busi­ness oper­a­tions, exclud­ing any con­tri­bu­tions from Endeav­or­Rx® rev­enues. Pro­ceeds from the trans­ac­tion will fund the com­mer­cial launch of Endeav­or­Rx, a first-of-its-kind, U.S. Food and Drug Admin­is­tra­tion (FDA) cleared and Con­for­mité Européenne (CE) Mark cer­ti­fied pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tic for pedi­atric atten­tion-deficit/hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (ADHD) (see full indi­ca­tion and safe­ty infor­ma­tion below), as well as poten­tial expan­sion into addi­tion­al ADHD patient pop­u­la­tions. Pro­ceeds will also sup­port the advance­ment of the company’s late-stage pipeline of prod­uct can­di­dates designed to treat neu­ropsy­chi­atric dis­eases, includ­ing autism spec­trum dis­or­der (ASD), mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis (MS), and major depres­sive dis­or­der (MDD). SCS share­hold­ers approved the trans­ac­tion at a gen­er­al meet­ing on August 18, 2022…

Eddie Mar­tuc­ci, CEO of Akili, said: “Today’s mile­stone reflects the com­bined efforts of the com­mit­ted Akili team and SCS who togeth­er made this defin­ing moment pos­si­ble. Mil­lions of peo­ple world­wide live with cog­ni­tive impair­ment with­out effec­tive treat­ments. I am proud of our tal­ent­ed employ­ees – lead­ers in neu­ro­science, enter­tain­ment and con­sumer tech­nol­o­gy – who are pro­pelling Akili’s inno­v­a­tive soft­ware-based ther­a­peu­tics for­ward to deliv­er an engag­ing, immer­sive expe­ri­ence. I am extreme­ly excit­ed about what’s ahead as we begin to scale and serve patients in need.”

News in Context:

• Dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics pio­neer Akili Inter­ac­tive plans to go pub­lic in mid-2022 at a $1B valuation
• Akili Inter­ac­tive Labs rais­es $160M in equi­ty and debt to trans­form cog­ni­tive health­care via pre­scrip­tion videogame treatments
• Pear Ther­a­peu­tics rais­es $175M and goes pub­lic via SPAC deal rais­ing the pro­file of pre­scrip­tion dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics (Update: shares were priced at $10 then; they trade at $1.59 on August 23rd, 2023)
• What are cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and how to boost them?