Talkspace, the US-based on-demand therapy provider that counts telecommunications and internet group SoftBank as an investor, agreed on Wednesday to a reverse merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).
The SPAC, Hudson Executive Investment Corp, is sponsored by private equity firm Hudson Executive Capital and floated on the Nasdaq Capital Market in a $360m initial public offering in June 2020. The deal gives Talkspace an initial enterprise valuation of $1.4bn.
Investors including Federated Hermes Kaufmann Funds, Jennison Associates, Woodline Partners and Deerfield are supplying $300m in private investment in public equity financing for the merged business in connection with the transaction.
Talkspace has built an online platform that provides a user base of 46,000 members with access to qualified clinicians to help improve their behavioural health. It offers enterprise and direct-to-consumer services and it expects to increase its revenue 69% from 2020 to about $125m this year.
The company had raised $110m since being founded in 2012, including $3.5m in a 2013 seed round featuring SoftBank subsidiary SoftBank Capital, Metamorphic Ventures and Spark Capital.
SoftBank and Spark Capital co-led a $9.5m series A round for Talkspace in 2015 that included Metamorphic Ventures and TheTime, before all four investors returned for a $15m series B led by Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) the following year.
Talkspace completed a $31m series C round in 2017 that was led by Qumra Capital and backed by SoftBank, NVP, Spark Capital, FirstTime and Compound Ventures. It added $50m from Revolution Growth, NVP, Qumra Capital, Spark Capital, Compound Ventures and unnamed existing investors in a mid-2019 series D round.
