Eli Lilly to Buy AtaiBeckley for Initial $2.8 Billion — Update
By Colin Kellaher
Eli Lilly has struck a deal to buy mental-health-focused AtaiBeckley for an initial $2.8 billion, continuing the drugmaker's recent buying spree.
Eli Lilly on Thursday said it will pay $6.75 a share in cash for AtaiBeckley, a 26% premium to Wednesday's closing price of $5.36 for the New York clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company.
The deal also includes contingent value rights worth up to an additional $1 billion, or $2.50 a share, tied to AtaiBeckley's pipeline of therapeutics for mental-health conditions, including lead program BPL-003, which is aimed at providing relief from treatment-resistant depression, Eli Lilly said.
The contingent value rights bring the total potential deal value to $3.8 billion, or $9.25 a share.
Shares of AtaiBeckley were recently up 33% to $7.15 in premarket trading.
AtaiBeckley's BPL-003 is a synthetic form of the psychedelic compound 5-MeO-DMT that is administered by nasal spray for treatment-resistant depression.
AtaiBeckley shares got a lift in April when President Trump signed an executive order aimed at accelerating research and patient access to psychedelic medicines for the treatment of mental illnesses.
Eli Lilly said it expects to complete the AtaiBeckley acquisition, which bolsters its neuroscience pipeline, in the third quarter.
The deal is the latest in a string of acquisitions by the Indianapolis company, which is flush with cash from its market-leading weight-loss-drug franchise.
Eli Lilly in late May agreed to acquire three vaccine developers in deals valued at up to nearly $4 billion combined, marking a new push into infectious-disease prevention.
Earlier in the year, the company struck deals each valued at less than $10 billion to buy cancer biotech Kelonia Therapeutics, blood-cancer focused Ajax Therapeutics, sleep-drug maker Centessa Pharmaceuticals, genetic-medicine biotechnology company Orna Therapeutics and biotech Ventyx Biosciences.
Write to Colin Kellaher at colin.kellaher@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
July 16, 2026 07:51 ET (11:51 GMT)
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