Akili cuts about 30% of staff in effort to be ‘extremely lean’ – Endpoints News

Ak­ili In­ter­ac­tive is ax­ing about a third of its work­force, the com­pa­ny re­vealed last week, while re­or­ga­niz­ing the pipeline around its FDA-cleared video game for at­ten­tion deficit hy­per ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (AD­HD).

Ed­die Mar­tuc­ci

CEO Ed­die Mar­tuc­ci said in an in­ter­nal mes­sage to em­ploy­ees on Jan. 12 that Ak­ili’s ex­ec­u­tive team has come to the “nec­es­sary but dif­fi­cult de­ci­sion” to say good­bye to 46 staffers. Those af­fect­ed have been no­ti­fied, and all lay­offs will take place by the end of the quar­ter, ac­cord­ing to an SEC fil­ing.

“I wish that we had a more ef­fi­cient foot­print so that this ac­tion would be less dra­mat­ic, but the truth is that we are just not as lean as we can be, and for that I apol­o­gize,” he wrote.

In 2020, En­deav­or­Rx be­came the first video game to win FDA au­tho­riza­tion as a men­tal health treat­ment. The game is cleared for kids 8 to 12 years old, and is de­signed to im­prove pa­tients’ at­ten­tion as they zoom through icy wa­ters and tar­get fly­ing crea­tures on the plan­et Frigidus. How­ev­er, in­sur­ers have been slow to cov­er En­deav­or­Rx and oth­er dig­i­tal ther­a­peu­tics.

In ad­di­tion to the cuts, Ak­ili is hold­ing off on a hand­ful of pro­grams be­yond AD­HD, such as at­ten­tion in autism spec­trum dis­or­der and cog­ni­tive dys­func­tion as­so­ci­at­ed with mul­ti­ple scle­ro­sis and ma­jor de­pres­sive dis­or­der, ac­cord­ing to the fil­ing. The com­pa­ny will con­tin­ue with in­ves­ti­ga­tor-ini­ti­at­ed stud­ies, and is “as­sess­ing var­i­ous po­ten­tial ways” to pur­sue those oth­er in­di­ca­tions, in­clud­ing part­ner­ships.

Two “Covid Fog” stud­ies be­ing con­duct­ed by out­side in­sti­tu­tions should pro­duce topline da­ta in the first half of this year, the com­pa­ny added.

As for AD­HD, Ak­ili will look to add more pa­tient groups to En­deav­or­Rx’s la­bel, in­clud­ing kids 13 to 17 years old, for which an FDA sub­mis­sion is ex­pect­ed this year. In adults, Ak­ili is stop­ping en­roll­ment ear­ly and an­a­lyz­ing da­ta ahead of sched­ule, af­ter re­cruit­ment was pro­gress­ing “more slow­ly than an­tic­i­pat­ed,” the fil­ing stat­ed.

Mar­tuc­ci said af­fect­ed em­ploy­ees will be of­fered at least two months’ salary and “ad­di­tion­al com­pen­sa­tion in recog­ni­tion of em­ploy­ee con­tri­bu­tions,” cost­ing the com­pa­ny a to­tal of $1.5 to $2.5 mil­lion, ac­cord­ing to the fil­ing. The changes are ex­pect­ed to ex­tend the com­pa­ny’s cash run­way to 2025.

“In re­cent months, the eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment has dra­mat­i­cal­ly shift­ed. As a re­sult, there is pres­sure on all com­pa­nies (no mat­ter where they are in their stage of growth) to be ex­treme­ly lean and op­er­ate as ef­fi­cient­ly as pos­si­ble to­ward prof­itable growth. While En­deav­or­Rx is gain­ing trac­tion, we still must re­duce our spend­ing in re­sponse to the new re­al­i­ties of the world around us,” Mar­tuc­ci wrote.