Digital prescription therapeutic company Pear Therapeutics announced Monday it had secured up to $50 million in additional capital from an affiliate of Thimble Point Acquisition Corp., the special purpose acquisition company it plans to merge with in order to trade publicly.

The new investment is adding to the $23 million Thimble Point’s sponsor already committed as part of the private investment in public equity funding, or PIPE, that is raised alongside the SPAC merger. The minimum gross proceeds from the PIPE are expected to be $175 million.

“Thimble Point’s mandate was to find a highly disruptive technology based company. We are thrilled to have found Pear, a company that is at the intersection of healthcare and technology and that could disrupt healthcare with cutting edge technology,” Elon Boms, president and CEO of Thimble Point, said in a statement.

“Pear is the perfect fit for us because its PDTs already are changing healthcare in the U.S., and Pear’s landmark payer decisions in 2021 with both government and commercial payers give us great confidence that PDTs will become mainstream medicine sooner than we expected when we approached Pear earlier this year. Thimble Point is proud to launch Pear as a well-funded public company.”

WHY IT MATTERS

Pear announced plans to go public via an SPAC merger in June, and the deal’s close is rapidly approaching.

In late October, the companies announced the Securities and Exchange Commission had accepted Thimble Point’s registration statement relating to the merger, and set a date for shareholders to vote on the combination. That meeting has been delayed to Nov. 30 with the announcement of the new capital.

SPACs have become a popular way for digital health companies to make a public exit. Baby tech company Owlet hit the New York Stock Exchange in July after closing an SPAC merger. Teletherapy company Talkspace debuted on Nasdaq in June. Digital health chatbot Babylon closed its SPAC merger last month after first announcing its plans this summer.

A Rock Health report from April noted some big reasons why SPACs are so popular right now, including that digital health is a high growth sector with the pandemic’s influence, pent-up demand from an IPO drought in 2017 and 2018, and quickly changing market trends.

“SPAC deal-making is quicker than IPO preparation, so exiting via SPAC can mitigate fear that demand for an initial public offering will not be around six months from now,” the report’s authors wrote.

THE LARGER TREND

Pear has been busy so far this year. Outside of its SPAC deal, the company added $20 million to a Series D round in March, bringing the round’s total to $100 million. Pear also inked several deals to integrate digital biomarkers, machine learning algorithms and sensor-based technologies into its platform.

In October, Pear revealed that its digital prescription therapeutics for treating substance and opioid use disorders, reSET and reSET-O, would be covered under Massachusetts’ Medicaid program, MassHealth. 

Pear has conducted several studies to prove the cost-effectiveness and impact of reSET-O. It also has a product called Somryst for treating chronic insomnia.