“With the protections afforded by the Bankruptcy Code, the Debtors intend to continue their marketing efforts to potential purchasers interested in specific assets as well as continuing to seek a sale of the whole business. Any of those sales would be subject to review and approval by the Bankruptcy Court and compliance with bidding procedures to be approved by the Bankruptcy Court.”

“[Pear continue to] employ fifteen (15) full-time employees (the “Employees”) on a salaried basis, and one (1) consultant (collectively with the Employees, the “Transition Team”) on an hourly basis, as of the Petition Date… [Pear] intend to retain sufficient staffing through the Transition Team to allow current patients to utilize the [Pear’s] products for the duration of their current fill of their prescription (without refills), complete their responsibilities in the Chapter 11 Cases, completing one or more sales of the [Pear’s] assets and confirming a chapter 11 plan.”

“In addition to capital raising issues, Pear expected its revenues to continue to grow after going public. Revenue grew in the first, second, and third quarters of 2022, but revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022 was down from the prior quarter and revenue in Q1 2023 was down further.”

“Compounding issues further, Pear… maintained most of its cash at SVB prior to the run on the bank on March 9, 2022 and the bank’s collapse on March 10, 2022. This caused significant distraction to the executive and leadership teams at Pear as they tried to open new accounts, evaluate options in the absence of access to cash and consider strategic alternatives. The FDIC’s receivership of SVB prompted Pear’s discussions with Perceptive as to issues over demand control agreements and the financial creditworthiness of Pear, ultimately leading to the Settlement Agreement.”

“MTS pursued over 140 different institutional, strategic and financial potential purchasers. Potential strategic purchasers included pharmaceutical companies, health care insurance payors, health care providers, public technology companies, venture capital and private equity-backed health and medical technology companies, pharmacies, and others… Over 90 parties engaged or responded to the strategic marketing process, approximately 24 parties executed or are in the process of executing confidentiality agreements and three parties submitted non-binding offers.”

“Today is a difficult day for Pear Therapeutics. We announced that Pear voluntarily filed for Chapter 11 and will seek to sell assets through a sales process. We also announced a reduction in force, including me. This is certainly not the outcome I envisioned when I founded Pear in 2013.

I want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank our departing Pear employees. The Pear team has accomplished a lot together in bringing the first Prescription Digital Therapeutics (PDTs) to market. We’ve shown that clinicians will readily prescribe PDTs. We’ve shown that patients will engage with the products. We’ve shown that our products can improve clinical outcomes. We’ve shown that our products can save payors money. Most importantly, we’ve shown that our products can truly help patients and their clinicians.

But that isn’t enough. Payors have the ability to deny payment for therapies that are clinically necessary, effective, and cost-saving. In addition, market conditions over the last two years have challenged many growth-stage companies, including us.

I want to personally thank each and every one of our employees for all that they’ve done for Pear and for patients. You are brave, talented, hard-working, mission-driven people and one of my greatest privileges has been to work by your side. I hope that this news doesn’t lessen your enthusiasm to innovate for patients.

A request for my LinkedIn network, as you see this, I highly recommend you connect with Pear alumni today to realize the tremendous benefits of having them join your team. Here’s to the future of digital medicine that we’ve worked so hard to create.”