Overview

Butterfly Network is a medical device company headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts, founded by Jonathan Rothberg and led by President, CEO and Chairman Joseph DeVivo. It listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2021 through a merger with Longview Acquisition Corp. Its main product is the Butterfly iQ3 handheld ultrasound probe, built on a semiconductor Ultrasound-on-Chip platform. Butterfly Embedded, its licensing and co-development business, offers that platform to other device makers.

Role in brain-computer interfaces

Butterfly has become a chip supplier to ultrasound brain-computer interface developers. In October 2023 it signed a five-year co-development agreement with Forest Neurotech, now Arbor Neuroscience, worth $20 million to Butterfly. In June 2026 Aleph Neuro, a San Francisco research lab in the Embedded programme, published a 3D image of a living human brain’s blood vessels captured through the intact skull with Butterfly chips. On 1 September 2026 Merge Labs named Butterfly its exclusive partner for chip-based ultrasound under a multi-year licence for the Poseidon chip family, with upfront payments, milestones, hardware purchase commitments, technology access fees and future royalties. Butterfly kept the right to license the same technology to others, and on 6 October Bridge Neurotech signed a multi-year research and development licence. The values of the Merge and Bridge agreements have not been disclosed.

Why it matters

The Embedded model gives Butterfly licence fees, hardware sales and, under the Merge deal, royalties from brain-computer interface programmes without building a device of its own. Three of those deals trace to the founders of one research group, Forest Neurotech. Butterfly alumni are also moving into the field: co-founder Nevada Sanchez and Darius Shahida, who spent eight years at Butterfly, both joined Science Corporation in 2026.

Coverage on InsideBCI

• 8 October 2026: Bridge Neurotech raises $13.5 million to build a brain-computer interface without surgery
• 1 September 2026: Merge Labs picks Butterfly’s ultrasound-on-chip for its brain-computer interface build
• 28 June 2026: Aleph Neuro reports what it says is the first 3D ultrasound localization microscopy image of a living human brain through an intact skull
• 29 July 2026: Science Corp hires Butterfly Network’s Nevada Sanchez as engineering chief as PRIMA commercial launch begins in Germany