Prescription Digital Therapeutics Company Pear Raises $80 Million

By Noah Long • Dec 15, 2020
  • Pear Therapeutics announced that it successfully closed an $80 million Series D financing led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. These are the details.

Pear Therapeutics announced that it successfully closed an $80 million Series D financing led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with participation from existing investors including Temasek, 5AM Ventures, Arboretum Ventures, JAZZ Venture Partners, Novartis, CrimsoNox, and EDBI, and new investors Forth Management, Pilot House, Sarissa Capital, Shanda Group, and QUAD Investment Management.

Prescription Digital Therapeutics (PDTs) are a new therapeutic class that uses software to directly treat serious disease, alone, or in combination with drugs. And Pear’s products reSET and reSET-O for the treatment of substance use disorder and opioid use disorder, respectively, are the first two PDTs to receive market authorization to treat disease from FDA. And Pear recently launched Somryst for the treatment of chronic insomnia, its third FDA-authorized PDT, and the third PDT to receive market authorization from FDA.

Recently, Pear also launched its end-to-end virtual care experience combining virtual doctor visit(s) via telemedicine provider with PearConnect, the industry’s first patient service center for PDTs. The company’s three FDA-authorized products address large market opportunities with more than 20 million patients suffering from substance and opioid use disorders and more than 30 million from chronic insomnia in the U.S. alone. And these diseases are on the rise as the pandemic has exacerbated the country’s mental health crises.

Pear will use the funding to accelerate reimbursement coverage for its three commercial products, creating the first market access pathway in the PDT industry. And the company collaborates with innovators to build a broad and deep pipeline that has the potential to redefine standard of care in a range of therapeutic areas, including specialty psychiatry, specialty neurology, and a host of other non-CNS diseases. Plus Pear has built the first scalable platform infrastructure to discover, develop, and deliver PDTs to patients.

In connection with the funding, Nancy Schlichting, retired Chief Executive Officer, Henry Ford Health System, and Board Director at Walgreens Boots Alliance and Hill-Rom Holdings, and Elena Viboch, an investor at SoftBank Investment Advisers, will join Pear’s Board of Directors. Reddy will contribute as a Board Observer.

KEY QUOTES:

“Pear is pleased to welcome our new investors and our new board members. SoftBank Investment Advisers represents an ideal partner to support Pear as we build the digital therapeutics industry. This oversubscribed round of funding will allow us to continue to invest in the launches of our three commercial products to accelerate revenue growth, which we intend to reinvest in our robust pipeline and platform.”

— Corey McCann, M.D., Ph.D., President and CEO of Pear Therapeutics

“We believe prescription digital therapeutics are creating a new category of medicine. Pear Therapeutics has combined biology and software to pioneer the first end-to-end platform for prescription digital products, with an initial focus on serious psychiatric diseases. We’re pleased to support Pear’s mission to create the next generation of therapeutics and deliver better patient outcomes.”

— Kirthiga Reddy, Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers

“It is a privilege to join Pear at this exciting time. Prescription Digital Therapeutics have the potential to change healthcare in many profound ways. Using technology to treat serious disease is an idea whose time has come, and I am proud to pioneer this new space with Pear and with SoftBank Investment Advisers.”

— Nancy Schlichting, retired Chief Executive Officer, Henry Ford Health System