Psychedelic Big Pharma: Eli Lilly Acquires AtaiBeckley

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Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically from YouTube's captions, then cleaned up by removing filler words, repeated words and background sounds. It may still contain errors.

[00:00] So this is a pretty big deal in the psychedelic industry. It's is the first time a huge far major pharmaceutical company has moved in and acquired one of the companies. It's too much of a hype fest. I think there you know there's nothing really here to be excited about. It's also it's big pharma. Isn't that what everybody's been worried about for so long? So today we are going to be covering some recent developments in the psychedelic industry. One of the big psychedelic drug developers which is a Thai life sciences. They were recently just acquired by Eli Liy like the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. All right. So the terms of the deal for the Atai Beckley were 675 a share which comes out to about $2.8 billion.

[00:51] And then there was also another billion dollars that would kick in if a tai met certain circum certain milestones within four to five years. Basically they have to enter into a phase three clinical trial of one of their drug candidates. So this is a pretty big deal in the psychedelic industry. It's is the first time a huge far major pharmaceutical company has moved in and acquired one of the companies. Their drug is BPL00003. That's a fast acting synthetic form of 5me DMT. A lot of people are super excited about this development. Are you excited about it? I'm not excited about it whatsoever. And this is not exciting. This is not exciting to me. What about you, Mike?

[01:36] Does this get you stoked for the psychedelic revolution? Unfortunately, this doesn't seem like much of the revolution that, you know, I'd be excited about. You're not super excited for a Spravado competitor out there competitor? No, I just I'm not, you know, and if you look at the evidence, we talked a little bit about 5 MO DMT synthetic in the episode with Dr. for Tyler Black and how just like weak the evidence is and how poorly these randomly controlled trials are done, you know, on specifically, you know, 5 Mod DMT and how the hype is just so intense there. Even in the research papers, they're talking about how this particular version of 5 MOD DMT is better than the best theoretically possible anti-depressant.

[02:25] So, it's too much of a hype fest. I think there, you know, there's nothing really here to be excited about. It's also, it's big pharma, isn't that what everybody's been worried about for so long? Yeah. And furthermore, this was also a Peter Tealbacked company. Yet again, you can't get rid of them. He's everywhere in everything. That is interesting. This guy is there. A Thai was founded in just a little background on a Tai. They were founded in 2018. They IPOed in 2021. The German Christian Angermmer is behind him, who's the guy that's also behind the enhanced games. And in 2025, they merged with Beckley. Several years ago, Beckley had spun off like a corporate company to do drug development and a had merged with them.

[03:13] That was Amanda Fieldings. Amanda Fielding had run the Beckley Foundation for years in the nonprofit and they went corporate a handful of years ago and then a Thai had merged with them. One thing I wanted to show was kind of the disconnect. I was poking around Twitter. There was a lot of kind of within the psychedelic industry and the psychedelic community, it kind of es and flows. This excitement sometimes is really not too much going on. And then sometimes when stuff like this happens, it's just reactions all over the place. And a lot of stuff was coming into my feed that was mostly retail investors who were kind of it seemed that they were mostly disappointed by the deal and the amount per share that they were going to be able to cash out.

[03:58] So let's do this first screenshot. This is Josh Hardman who runs Psychedelic Alpha. He did this poll. It was 413 votes. only 19% were excited about it, which kind of tracked with the sentiment and tweets that I was seeing. Most people were either not happy or were kind of meh feeling about it. I think one of the reasons this next screenshot, one of the reasons I think is because Christian Anger Meer in the past had been putting these huge valuations on a tie. Someone had posted. Seeing that old post about Christian saying a Thai could be a 20 billion dollar company pop up again is interesting timing.

[04:45] So yeah, there there was this number in people's minds that this was going to be this gigantic unicorn, you know, whatever. You'd be able to invest a little bit and cash out a ton. And so when this $2.8 billion, it's between 2.8, it well, it's a guaranteed 2.8, it can go to 3.8 if the milestones are hit within 5 years. So when people see the, you know, the hyped up valuation at being five to seven times lower than what they were potentially expecting. I think that can definitely lead to some investors feeling a little bit deflated out there. It's unusual for, I think, us and investors in the psychedelic industry to be not excited about some news. So this is an interesting leveling of the playing field I suppose.

[05:34] Yeah. I mean I don't think it really surprises me. I have been personally been super bearish since kind of all of these companies came out because it was I think pretty apparent that to me my views this whole my views this whole time have basically been you're not going to be able to have this mental health revolution unless you focus on people's material realities and their social relations. So, I think that's the built-in failure of all psychedelics, that they're not going to change the underlying conditions. You're going to dose someone, you're going to put them back right into the same environment that they came out of.

[06:19] That's not to say that it's not going to help out a certain percentage of people. I think it probably will, but what the public has been sold, I think, tracks with a valuation like this. That's sort of my kind of hot take on it. There was another person who had made a post and they said, "A roller coaster of emotions after the a Thai deal. Some quick thoughts. Tai's pipeline looks weaker than the hype suggested. 5 MOD DMT has real safety flags and feels like a last resort option. Not waiting for the VLS001 data raises questions about their confidence. Let me know if I got I have this right. that the like if the thinking would be that if they thought they might have like a real winner on their hands, they would wait to have that data before selling.

[07:09] Is that kind of the thinking process? Cuz kind of like if you think you might draw a card that's going to make your hand in poker like amazing, you would like wait to play the hand essentially like it's a bluff. My guess on this just without being, you know, an analyst for specifically for TAI here, my guess here is that they were offered a certain amount of money that was fair to them or there was other things coming in the future that, you know, maybe Lily could have bought another company, one of these other two companies, the Cybin, what are they called Helis now or Definium which is for formerly MindMed.

[07:55] I don't know. The answer is I don't know but a bird in the hand whole thing you know. Yeah. That like if they felt like they had a real winner that was just like you know a little bit away from proving itself. You would they wouldn't agree to a deal to get that in order to ask for more money. Yeah that's how I was reading it. But the thing is VLS00001 is not even in phase three yet. But it's like if you really believed your hype, if you're this company and you're really drinking your, you know, your Kool-Aid, whatever your, you know, you're jazzed up about it and you thought you have a bunch of field advancing medicines on your hands, you wouldn't necessarily sell without having proven the multiple amazing options that you have in your pipeline.

[08:43] I think the fact is is that the board of a Thai like realized this is the best deal that they're likely to get and they had to take it. The tweet has a typo. It's VLS01. This has 001. Oh, nice. But really, but what it is is a transmucosal film formulation of DMT of NN DMT. Yeah, I don't This is some rando by the way, just to point that out. I think it's interesting stuff to the points that he's making to talk about. Well, the reason I wanted to mention that is I think it's sort of you could see this as close reading that they don't believe their own hype. You know, that that's kind of how I'm reading it. And I think that that point is interesting to make because it's like it kind of supports a lot of what we've been saying about this space that the hype is kind of opportunistic, right?

[09:31] And so your reading makes a lot more sense because why he this Twitter person is saying why would they sell at such a low price without even knowing the data of their one of their flagship products unless they don't have a lot of confidence in it. Exactly. Yeah. And then the poster goes on to say that they believe that Lila it's high cheap but I don't think these are the best in-class assets. doubt they're done buying, which it's going to be interesting to see what happens. Is is Lily gonna scoop in and whatever is out there if they think it's worth it. Lily is sitting on just o an ocean of cash right now. So it this might be the point where they just swoop in and buy up what's out there.

[10:16] And this person thought that Anger Myers hype machine needs a reality check as well. And I just think that's I think that's the kind of sentiment out there in retail. Oh, there was one more that I wanted to show which was Halter Ferguson Financial. They posted an open letter to the Thai Beckley board of directors and they said because of this immense potential we were deeply disappointed by the announced term of announced terms of the proposed acquisition by Eli Lily. We believe the agreed upon price of 675 per share even when including the 250 and contingent value rights which are to be collected over several years for $9.25 total potential value drastically undervalues a Thai Beckley and fails to compensate shareholders for the company's true intrinsic value.

[11:04] They're a wealth asset management firm and financial adviser company in Indianapolis it looks like. Yeah, they must have some assets in it. I don't not happy with this sale. All right, so I just wanted to kind of contrast some of the retail reactions with some of the Atai investors and some of the, you know, people behind it. This first one is from our friend Steve Jervson. He's a close to Elon. He's a he's an investor. He said Psychedog medicine is going mainstream. The world's largest pharmaceutical company is allocating $3.8 8 billion to acquire Atai Beckley, the largest acquisition so far for the sector. Congrats to Dr. Shernabas Ralph and the entire Atai team.

[11:52] He's so very excited for them. What was interesting, I think, to us when we were in chat was that so he's so excited about this. But this is the same guy who, you know, during 2024 to smear Psymposia out there in the press. He was accusing us of being backed by big pharma. And yet he's so excited. Now, this is a complete lie. And he had to go on to edit and I think delete this tweet. But very excited when Big Farmer comes in to back his bags. But you know, well, and notice another little hype trick that he's using there. He says allocating 3.8 billion, not disclosing that one of those billion is contingent upon, you know, seven years of perfect trial criteria and DEA rescheduling and all these things.

[12:50] So, it's just inflation, you know, he's just inflating it more. And also, he's not the only one that's accused Psymposia of big pharma funding, right? Hamilton Morris. That's what happened. And that's why MDMA was banned from being legalized. I think also Eona funding Psymposia played a role as well. Yeah, they're all in the same camp essentially. It's the [expletive] camp of just spewing lies. It's lie. And I don't know how else to say it. It's like a thing you could you say, oh, they accept big pharma. It's the equivalent of the deep state, you know? It's conspiratorial. It's intentional. They know it's not true. Yeah. You know, it just sounds good when they say it. One of the other Thai investors is Mike Novagrats.

[13:38] He was extremely happy about it. Congrats to Christian Angermier. It's been a 10-year sprint and you never got tired. As a shareholder, an early adopter. I couldn't be happier. Of course not. When you bought in at a very low amount, he's very excited. Another one is Kathy Wood. If you don't know Kathy Wood, she's like behind ARC. She said, "Wow, Christian Angmire is selling his psychedelic biotech company, A Thai, for 3.8 approximately 3.8 billion to the largest biotech company in the world, Lily. Not only a well-deserved return for it shareholders, this trans transaction validates Christian's heartfelt mission and vision." She goes on to say, "Blah blah blah." So she's very excited about this. She had recently bought, I think, quite a bit of a tie recently.

[14:26] I know that was news. She gets in and gets out of things pretty quick, too. She's one of Tesla and Musk's biggest people out in the press constantly. And then Christian Angier had his post was, "Letting go is never easy. Over the past few weeks, I found myself getting a little stareyed thinking about a tie, but 10 years ago, psychedelics needed an evangelist. Today, they need commercialization." In my latest blog post, I share my thoughts on the future of medical psychedelics, my investment philosophy, and why I believe psychedelics could become an essential tool for humanity as he as we enter what I expect to be the most disruptive, most exciting, and most challenging period in our history. And that piece that he published was called My Love Letter to Psychedelics and Humanity's Future.

[15:15] We did a recent discussion about Christian Anger Meer and in that video we talked about the fact that when he says that it's a maybe an essential tool for humanity during this disruptive time, he speaks very openly about getting the masses to accept the tech dystopian future that the elites are building out that he's building out. Him and his teal circle are building out. Yeah. Yeah. So, I just wanted to kind of make that connection cuz it's like he's hinting at that echo in the language there, but he's not overtly saying it. We also talked about I think normally you did in that episode you may have even mentioned like you're not sure if he's going to stay in psychedelics altogether because he's chasing the peptides grift.

[16:01] I think I was saying that in chat. Yeah. I if I was in this space and I was like a big investor in this space with a lot you know a lot of equity in the space I would totally want to get out after the last five years have been a total disaster in the space so you know get out while you can now there's way more profitable things for him to be invested in my opinion I'm not long I'm not bullish on psychedelics at all a couple of the quotes he had from this Twitter this extended Twitter article. Love letter. Yeah. So, I believe that psychedelic medicines will soon bring healing to hundreds of millions of people suffering from mental health disorders.

[16:47] I helped create the spark for the for an entirely new industry. So he also says, "Everyone I met early on had in one way or another quietly accepted that psychedelics might never return to mainstream medicine." Return. I was not willing to accept that. I have been in this space longer than he has. And that wasn't my impression that everybody like abandoned this. They quietly accepted that they weren't going to return. And what does that even mean that they're never going to return? People were working and agree with him or disagree with them. People were working in their own ways to make psychedelics to return. I think you can easily argue if you wanted to make psychedelics to return the way not to do it is the way that he's doing it, which is going to return it to the what the most tiny percentage of people ever.

[17:36] Like if you want something to not really be accessible, medicalize it. Well, like with MAPS, they were working on clinical trials forever and were trying to make MDMA into a medicine, but they were at the same time trying to change the way that kind of big pharma worked by doing things like not having patents and having aspects of it like open source. So they were trying to still create a mainstream medicine but change the way the medical industry functioned. Whereas for Anger Meyer, he was more interested in taking the status quo of big pharma and merging that with psychedelics. For sure. I mean, there's other there's been people working to do this for decades. So to say to for him to just come in and say, "Me."

[18:24] It's ridiculous to anyone who knows anything about this space. Like Yeah. There's a little bit of truth to some of the stuff that he says. I helped create a spark. Yeah. He dumped a [expletive] ton of money into the space. Like, I get it. He had connections in high places that that Absolutely. One of the reasons that we published in 2020, I think it was that an article about that a Thai was positioned to take the psychedelic throne for maps. It was obvious very early on that they were going to be a serious contender and that his association and investment in Compass Compass was going to make them a serious contender.

[19:09] Like when Peter Teal moves into a space, he's not [expletive] around, you know? Like if he's backing someone, he's doing diligence and he has power to make those things come to fruition. Which is the reason why I thought for a long time that it was going to be compass and a tie. It wasn't going to be Cybin. It wasn't going to be MindMed. Pay attention to these two companies. I'm not saying that those two companies are not going to be acquired or anything, but the heavy hitters have always been Compass and a Tai. And I think it was clear to anyone that was looking at it. Mike, you want to go down to the 10 years ago quote? Yeah. 10 years ago, psychedelics needed someone like me willing to convince the world. Today, the world is largely convinced. Now the challenge is to get these medicines into the hands of millions of patients around the globe as quickly as possible.

[19:58] This is delusional and dangerous for a lot of reasons which should be apparent and to most people who are listening to us talk about this. But like 10 years ago, psychedelics needed someone like me willing to convince the world. Well, you haven't convinced the world. This is a this is quite sensational. And to say that the world is largely convinced we have in the United States, how many states do we even have programs in? Several a few like there's pretty much no access anywhere to say that the world is convinced this is this isn't even remotely true. And then again, it's just more of this we need to go as fast as possible. And he's saying he's literally saying it.

[20:44] We need to get this into the bodies of millions of people as quickly as possible. It's like he's not even hedging it with as quickly and safely as possible, right? Put it in the water, right? It's like maybe it's time for me to slip some MDMA in the water. By the way, jokes aside, I do think it would work. Yeah, totally. It's It's totally ridiculous. It's like with the consumer, you know, LLMs and AI, you know, that people just like with chat GBT just getting it out to the masses as quickly as possible and then meanwhile there's all of these flaws in the way that it's operating that people are getting encouraged to end their lives and that sort of thing. It's like that's the sort of thing that happens if you rush forward this quickly without an attention to safety. 100%.

[21:29] And then they start, you know, did you guys see the Koshi? This is like betting markets. It's very similar to betting markets in a lot of cases. It's the same investors that are behind them. But this is the same like attitude just moving as fast just, you know. Well, it's also the same attitude with what he's talking about here, right? Like why do I spend my time on things seemingly as different as Bitcoin, AI, brain computer interfaces, etc. They're not different. He says they're not different, but the reasons he's saying it aren't they aren't different are not really why they're not different. You know, they're all on that like move as fast as possible mindset. They're all grifts in some way or another. They're all being, you know, they're these investors and these billionaires are taking advantage of each of these to get money. That's and what does he say?

[22:16] He says at one point that all his investments revolve around the concept of freedom. Yeah, freedom is somewhere in here. I just I wanted to and in a previous interview several years ago just speaking of freedom, his quote was, "I fear that if we do wider legalization, it could be very detrimental and bad for those who really need it and it could push back the whole effort. Society is like a rubber band. If you hit too hard, it comes back and it hits you. It hits you back. Let's go step by step. Who does society hit back?" like is he not he's saying he's not part of society in this case, right? Like I don't really understand that quot end of that quote. Look, I get if you move really fast things can come back and smack you in the face.

[23:01] Like yeah, I get that. At the same time, it's just super hypocritical to say that you're your purpose for existence investing is for freedom. Yeah. And then to say, "Yeah, I fear if we do wider legalization, it could be very detrimental and bad for people who need it." Like, I mean, we saw the clips in the last time we talked about him about, you know, talking about slavery as like a normal thing. Of course, he was talking about AIs as slaves, but he has no concept of freedom. He doesn't care about freedom as long as he's free and he can capture as much as he can and everyone else's freedom does not matter to him. Well, yeah. I mean it's freedom for capital and that's ultimately like I think all of those technologies fit together with this like latestage endstage capitalism that we're at where it's like all these markets have been saturated and people are starting to see the contradictions and so these are always either of like with you know the techutopian sort of

[24:02] Technology promising that we're going to transcend the earth we're going to go to other planets and then the you know fixing people's mindset with psychedelics to be more in line with this vision. It kind of is very zeitgeisty. You know, they all fit with that kind of capitalism is looking for ways to continue, you know, parasetizing off of the planet and beyond it. Yeah. I think that's more accurate view of his he's a late stage capitalist and he's getting in these like he's like investing quickly in these I don't know perceived market solutions like right at the end as the house is on fire. [laughter] Like it's very bizarre. It's very bizarre. He's very like you can just see how he's a very like teal protege in his investment choices in his world view.

[24:51] I don't know. All right. I think that's enough on that.