Gestala, a Chinese brain-computer interface startup barely two months old, has raised $21.6 million (CN¥150 million) at a valuation between $100 million and $200 million. The round was heavily oversubscribed, with investor commitments exceeding $58 million — roughly 2.5 times what the company accepted. It is the largest early-stage BCI funding round in China’s history.
The round was co-led by Guosheng Capital and Dalton Venture, with participation from Tsing Song Capital, Gobi Ventures, Fourier Intelligence, Liepin, and Seas Capital. The breadth of the investor list, spanning deep tech, healthcare, and robotics, reflects the cross-sector interest in what ultrasound-based neural interfaces might eventually enable.
The Founders
The pedigree behind Gestala matters more than most startup origin stories. Tianqiao Chen founded Shanda Interactive Entertainment, one of China’s first internet gaming empires, and now runs the California-based Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute, which funds neuroscience research globally. His co-founder and CEO, Phoenix Peng, previously founded NeuroXess, the implantable BCI company that recently broke ground on China’s first BCI factory.
That combination — a billionaire patron with deep neuroscience funding networks and an operator who has already built and scaled an invasive BCI company — gives Gestala a starting position that few two-month-old startups can claim. Peng’s shift from invasive to non-invasive technology is itself a signal about where he sees the market heading.
Why Ultrasound
Most non-invasive BCIs use electroencephalography (EEG), reading electrical signals from the scalp surface. The approach is safe and cheap but limited: scalp-based signals are noisy and shallow, capturing only cortical surface activity. Implanted electrodes solve the depth problem but require brain surgery.
Ultrasound occupies a distinct third position. Focused ultrasound waves penetrate the skull without surgical incision and can reach deep neural circuits that surface electrodes cannot access. Using phased-array transducers, the technology can monitor larger portions of the brain than implanted electrode arrays, and can precisely stimulate or suppress neural activity at specific targets. In principle, this gives ultrasound both the depth advantage of implants and the safety profile of wearable devices.
The trade-off is resolution. Ultrasound cannot yet match the single-neuron precision of implanted microelectrode arrays. For applications requiring that level of granularity, surgical implants remain the only viable option. But for neuromodulation — changing brain activity rather than reading it at cellular resolution — the trade-off may be acceptable.
Chronic Pain First, Then Wider
Gestala’s lead clinical programme targets chronic pain, a condition affecting an estimated 50 million adults in the United States alone. Existing academic research suggests that focused ultrasound stimulation can significantly reduce pain levels by modulating the relevant neural circuits. The regulatory pathway is comparatively clear: spinal cord stimulators and vagus nerve devices already provide FDA-approved precedents for neural pain modulation.
Beyond pain, the company is researching six to eight additional indications including depression, PTSD, autism spectrum disorder, OCD, stroke rehabilitation, and longer-term targets like Alzheimer’s disease, essential tremor, and Parkinson’s. Most of these remain in early research rather than active clinical programmes.
Scale and Timeline
Gestala currently has 15 employees and plans to reach roughly 35 by the end of 2026. The company expects to complete its first-generation prototype before year’s end. It is also building its clinical trial strategy around a specific cost advantage: running trials in China costs between 20 and 33 percent of equivalent trials in the United States or Europe.
The Competitive Landscape
Gestala is not the first company pursuing ultrasound-based BCIs. In the US, Merge Labs — backed by OpenAI with a $252 million seed round — is developing a similar approach. The funding disparity is stark: Merge has raised roughly twelve times what Gestala has, though Gestala claims to be the first ultrasound BCI company in China and argues that its cost structure compensates for the funding gap.
The broader context is a Chinese BCI industry that is accelerating rapidly. Beijing has designated brain-computer interfaces as a strategic national priority, government funding is flowing through the China Brain Project, and companies like NeuroXess are scaling manufacturing. Gestala’s record-breaking raise suggests that investor appetite in China’s BCI sector extends beyond implantable devices into the non-invasive frontier, where the path to mass-market deployment may ultimately be shorter.