The brain-computer interface industry raised at least $960 million across nine significant funding rounds in the first three months of 2026, a quarterly total that exceeds anything the sector has produced in a comparable period. The capital came from venture firms, sovereign wealth funds, strategic corporates, and — in a first for the field — an artificial intelligence company investing directly in neural interface hardware.
The largest round belonged to Merge Labs, the Sam Altman co-founded startup that raised $252 million in seed funding at an $850 million valuation in January. OpenAI wrote the biggest cheque, with Bain Capital, Interface Fund, Fifty Years, and Gabe Newell also participating. Merge is pursuing a non-invasive approach using focused ultrasound and engineered molecules rather than electrodes, though the company has disclosed no product timeline and a February Nature News report questioned whether the underlying physics supports the claimed resolution.
Science Corporation followed in March with a $230 million Series C to accelerate commercialisation of its PRIMA retinal implant. The round, backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, and IQT (the investment arm of the US intelligence community), valued the company at $1.5 billion. Science expects a CE mark decision in mid-2026, which would make PRIMA the first BCI product to reach commercial market.
Synchron closed a $200 million Series D in late 2025, with the capital flowing into 2026 operations. Led by Double Point Ventures, the round included the Qatar Investment Authority, Australia’s National Reconstruction Fund, and existing backers ARCH Ventures, Khosla Ventures, and Bezos Expeditions. Synchron is preparing pivotal trials for its Stentrode endovascular BCI and recently became the first company to integrate Apple’s BCI-human interface device protocol, connecting brain activity directly to iOS devices.
Cognito Therapeutics closed an oversubscribed $105 million Series C in March, led by Morningside Ventures, to advance its Spectris neurostimulation platform for Alzheimer’s disease. The device delivers gamma-frequency light and sound stimulation for an hour daily. Cognito’s HOPE pivotal study is fully enrolled, with topline data expected later this year and commercial launch targeted for 2027.
Salma Health emerged from stealth in February with $80 million in Series A funding co-led by Mubadala Capital and ARCH Ventures, launching an integrated brain health network combining TMS, neuromodulation, esketamine therapy, and clinical trials across four California locations. While not a BCI company in the traditional sense, the round signals growing investor appetite for the broader brain health category that BCI technologies will eventually serve.
In China, StairMed secured $72.5 million in a round led by Alibaba Group, with Tencent, OrbiMed, and Qiming Venture Partners among existing backers. StairMed has completed clinical implantation of its second-generation 256-channel wireless BCI system and represents a growing cohort of Chinese companies attracting both domestic tech giants and international life sciences investors.
Gestala, a Chinese ultrasound BCI startup founded just two months before its funding announcement, raised $21.6 million co-led by Guosheng Capital and Dalton Venture. The company is targeting chronic pain as its lead application, with mental health conditions and neurodegenerative diseases as longer-term programmes.
Round sizes are approaching mainstream medtech scale. A $252 million seed round and a $230 million Series C would be unremarkable in oncology or cardiology; in BCI, they represent a step change. The sector’s total venture funding now comfortably exceeds $3 billion since Neuralink’s earliest rounds.
Capital is also spreading across every BCI modality. Invasive electrode arrays (StairMed), endovascular stents (Synchron), retinal implants (Science Corp), focused ultrasound (Merge, Gestala), and non-invasive neurostimulation (Cognito, Salma Health) all attracted significant investment. The market is not converging on a single technical approach.
The investor base is diversifying beyond traditional biotech venture capital. Sovereign wealth funds (Qatar Investment Authority, Mubadala Capital, Australia’s NRF), strategic corporates (Alibaba, Tencent, OpenAI), and intelligence-linked capital (IQT) are now writing cheques alongside ARCH, Khosla, and Lightspeed. For a field that relied on a handful of specialist funds five years ago, the breadth of the capital base is a structural shift.
The quarter’s missing element is revenue. Essentially no BCI company is generating meaningful product sales. Science Corp’s anticipated European launch later this year could change that, and Synchron and Precision Neuroscience are both advancing toward commercialisation pathways. But for now, the sector remains funded almost entirely by expectations rather than earnings — a position that becomes harder to sustain as round sizes grow and investor return timelines shorten.