Atai Life Sciences

atai Life Sciences is a pharmaceutical company that is developing psychedelics, other hallucinogens, entactogens, and related drugs for treatment of psychiatric conditions. It was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Berlin, Germany.

The company's pharmaceutical candidates include dimethyltryptamine (DMT; VLS-01), (R)-midomafetamine ((R)-MDMA; EMP-01), and ibogaine (IBX-210, DMX-1002), as well as EGX-121 (a non-tryptamine new chemical entity), 5-MeO-DMT (BPL-003), psilocin (ELE-101), inidascamine (RL-007), deuterated mitragynine (KUR-101), EGX-A, EGX-B, deuterated etifoxine (GRX-917), and arketamine (PCN-101).

In June 2021, atai became a public company when it completed an initial public offering by listing its shares on the NASDAQ stock exchange. In January 2023, atai Life Science's leading drug candidate at the time, arketamine (PCN-101), failed to meet its primary endpoint in a clinical trial. Following that, the company laid off 30% of its staff.

Peter Thiel is a major investor in the company. atai Life Sciences has a 22.4% stake in Compass Pathways.