Google cofounder Sergey Brin got a $366 million windfall from selling all his Tesla shares back in 2021—now he’s using some of the funds to back a startup studying a hallucinogenic mental-health treatment derived from an African shrub.
Brin’s nonprofit Catalyst4 is contributing $15 million of a $25 million funding round in biotech startup Soneira, the Financial Times reported, citing several people briefed on the discussions.
The company is reportedly launching clinical trials to see whether Ibogaine, a psychedelic compound found in the roots of the African Iboga shrub, could be used as a treatment for traumatic brain injury (TBI) caused by sports injuries, car crashes, and combat experiences.
The shrub has long been used by central African tribes in spiritual rituals because of its mind-altering effects, but Ibogaine has also been recently tested as a means to treat addiction and depression.
Brin’s investment comes as a new crop of health- and psychedelic-related startups have become increasingly popular with investors. In 2020, another tech magnate, PayPal cofounder and venture capitalist Peter Thiel, invested in Atai Life Sciences, a German biopharmaceutical company also looking into Ibogaine as a treatment for opioid addiction. In 2021, VCs poured a record $528 million into psychedelic biotech startups, and about $180 million has already been invested so far this year, according to PitchBook data.
Some Silicon Valley insiders have also started taking small doses of psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD recreationally in search of mental clarity or creative thinking.
In 2021, Brin sold his entire stake in Tesla after CEO Elon Musk allegedly engaged in a brief affair with Brin’s then-wife Nicole Shanahan, which he later divorced, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2022. Musk has previously denied the affair.
The stock sale netted Brin hundreds of millions of dollars that in part originated from a $500,000 investment Brin made in Tesla in 2008 when the company was struggling financially. He used the funds to set up the nonprofit Catalyst4, with the mission of “supporting breakthroughs in the treatment of [central nervous system] neurological diseases/disorders, and in efforts to mitigate and reverse the effects of climate change,” Bloomberg reported, citing IRS records.
Soneira, the psychedelics startup, is testing whether combining Ibogaine with heart medications will mitigate the risks of fatal cardiac arrhythmia, which is a potential side effect of the hallucinogen. The company is also trying to develop a synthetic version of the compound, the FT reported, citing people briefed on the discussions.