Inside the Billionaire Takeover of Lykos—and Rick Doblin’s Comeback

As the sun rose over Burning Man on August 31 to the hi-tempo tune of psytrance, Rick Doblin, the pioneering MDMA advocate and founder of the Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), danced at the “We Will Dance Again” installation. In a powerful tribute to honor the victims of the October 7 attack at the Nova music festival in Israel, hundreds of people had gathered on the playa to continue the party that had so tragically been cut short. “And who should be dancing right next to me, completely by chance, but Antonio,” Doblin says. “It was serendipitous. We talked about Lykos, and a few months later, I sought him out.”

Few in the psychedelic community knew Antonio Gracias’ name before this year. But, on January 10, the Financial Times revealed that the billionaire, a close ally of psychedelic-friendly tech tycoon Elon Musk, had launched a $100 million bid to take control of the psychedelic biotech firm Lykos Therapeutics. Gracias reportedly aimed to strengthen Lykos’s alliance with MAPS, signaling a potential shift away from a pharma-centric approach and a return to MAPS’s non-profit drug development roots. 

Despite enjoying Burning Man, 2024 was Doblin’s annus horribilis, he told friends at a psychedelic conference in Vancouver in November. His life’s dream crumbled when the Food and Drug Administration declined the application for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD, a project he worked decades developing and striving to bring to fruition. Forced to watch Lykos pursue what he believes was a flawed, pharma-driven strategy — one that kept its distance from what he describes as bad faith attacks in the lead-up to the FDA decision — Doblin found himself sidelined.

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