A Startup Used AI to Make a Psychedelic Without the Trip - Mindstate Design Labs and its MSD-001 moxy program

Mindstate Design Labs is using AI-driven drug discovery to create a psychoactive experience with fewer classic “trip” features like hallucinations. WIRED reports the company built AI models linking biochemical drug data to more than 70,000 trip reports collected from clinical datasets, drug forums, social media, Reddit, and the dark web. Its first candidate, MSD-001, is an oral formulation of 5-MeO-MiPT (moxy). In Phase I results shared with WIRED, MSD-001 appeared safe and well tolerated across multiple doses in healthy volunteers while producing psychoactive effects such as heightened emotions, associative thinking, and brighter colors, without typical psychedelic trip markers. The company says brain imaging showed overlap with brain-wave patterns seen with psilocybin and other first-generation psychedelics. Mindstate frames its strategy as “uncoupling” therapeutic potential from hallucination-heavy experiences, while experts quoted note it is not clear whether the tested compound should be classified as a psychedelic in the usual sense.