A small Swiss company that just closed a $7.5 million seed round to commercialise a soft, stretchable brain electrode is the latest commercial output of a research cluster most US and Asian BCI press has yet to engage with directly. Neurosoft Bioelectronics, the EPFL spinout that Inside BCI covered on Friday 22 May, is one of at least three notable neurotechnology companies to have come out of the same Lausanne-Geneva academic cluster anchored on EPFL’s Neuro-X Institute at Campus Biotech Geneva. The cluster has also produced ONWARD Medical (NASDAQ-listed brain-spine interface company) and MindMaze (Lausanne-founded brain-technology unicorn), and is the academic source of the brain-spine architecture that China’s Xuanwu Hospital team is now clinically copying.

The cluster anatomy

EPFL’s Neuro-X Institute is the integrating structure for the Lausanne-Geneva neurotechnology cluster. The institute is headquartered at Campus Biotech Geneva, an EPFL associated campus established as a partnership between EPFL, the University of Geneva, the Wyss Center for Bio- and Neuroengineering, the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), and the Campus Biotech Geneva Foundation. The Lausanne side of the cluster is anchored on EPFL’s main campus, with clinical translation through CHUV (Lausanne University Hospital).

The cluster’s faculty roster is short and unusually translational. Prof. Stéphanie Lacour runs the Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces, which produced Neurosoft Bioelectronics. Prof. Grégoire Courtine, working with CHUV neurosurgeon Prof. Jocelyne Bloch, has built the brain-spine interface programme that produced ONWARD Medical. Prof. Silvestro Micera leads neural prosthetics work. Prof. Diego Ghezzi works on retinal prostheses and visual restoration. All four have moved their labs progressively into Campus Biotech Geneva, with the Center for Neuroprosthetics having relocated to the campus earlier in the cluster’s development.

The Wyss Center for Bio- and Neuroengineering, an independent non-profit research foundation on the same campus, operates in close coordination with the EPFL labs. The Wyss Center has its own neurotechnology programme and has historically collaborated with international BCI research groups including the BrainGate consortium.

The serial commercial output

Three notable companies trace their origins to this cluster, with a fourth on the way.

ONWARD Medical is the brain-spine interface company built on Courtine and Bloch’s research. ONWARD spun out of EPFL and is now listed on Euronext as ONWD. The company has two commercial programmes: ARC-EX (a non-invasive transcutaneous spinal cord stimulator, FDA-approved for upper-limb function in patients with chronic SCI) and ARC-BCI (a brain-spine interface in early clinical work with the same intent-decoded brain-stimulator-trigger architecture Courtine and Bloch published in Nature in 2023). ONWARD raised $40 million in April 2026 to scale ARC-EX commercialisation and fund the implantable pipeline, covered in Inside BCI’s 20 April piece.

Neurosoft Bioelectronics is the soft cortical electrode company built on Lacour’s research. Founded in 2020 by Nicolas Vachicouras (CEO), Ludovic Serex, Florian Fallegger, and Lacour herself, the company is now headquartered at Campus Biotech Geneva (the company moved from the Lausanne lab to the Geneva campus as it scaled). The flagship 64-channel stretchable cortical array is in clinical work at UTHealth Houston and UMC Utrecht in epilepsy-surgery guidance, with severe tinnitus as the second target indication. The Lacour lab’s electrode platform is described as 1,000 to 100,000 times softer than conventional electrodes, an order-of-magnitude range that exists because the lab has demonstrated different formulations at different points on the softness spectrum.

MindMaze is the longer-running incumbent. Founded in 2012 in Lausanne by Tej Tadi (EPFL PhD), MindMaze works at the intersection of neuroscience, biosensing, engineering, mixed reality, and AI for stroke recovery and neurorehabilitation. The company reached unicorn status in 2016 with a $1.5 billion valuation, the first European neurotechnology unicorn, and remains one of the larger European neurotechnology private companies.

A fourth commercial line is in motion from Ghezzi’s retinal prosthesis work, with the POLYRETINA programme having been the subject of a recent commercialisation pathway.

Why this matters for the international BCI map

The Lausanne-Geneva cluster is structurally underrated in English-language BCI press. The dominant narrative frames European BCI capacity around individual companies (INBRAIN’s graphene work in Barcelona, CorTec in Freiburg, the various UK academic spinouts), with Synchron sometimes counted as European-origin because of its Melbourne founders despite its New York headquarters. The cluster picture is different. Campus Biotech Geneva is now operating as a coordinated multi-faculty multi-company neurotechnology engine in the European public-research mode, with the EIF-anchored capital infrastructure (covered in Friday’s Neurosoft + Skybound piece) increasingly available to support its commercial spinouts.

The cluster’s research output also has visible global impact. The Courtine-Bloch brain-spine interface architecture, published in Nature in 2023 (Lorach et al.) and earlier (Wagner et al. 2018), is the architectural template that the Xuanwu Hospital / Beinao-1 team in China is now clinically copying (see Inside BCI’s 24 May piece). A research cluster whose architecture gets copied globally is operating at a different tier than one whose commercial outputs are just being amplified locally.

The capital map

The Lausanne-Geneva cluster has historically lacked the venture capital depth that US clusters (Boston, San Francisco, Austin) provide. That gap has closed materially in 2026. The European Investment Fund anchoring the new Skybound Athens-based deeptech fund (which led the Neurosoft round) is part of a broader pattern of European public-sector capital coordinating with private capital to support deeptech spinouts. Spain’s CDTI-Innvierte and Fond ICO Next Tech, Belgium’s imec.xpand, and Catalonia’s Avançsa have done the same for INBRAIN Neuroelectronics in Barcelona (covered in Inside BCI’s 8 May sovereign capital piece).

What the Lausanne-Geneva cluster still lacks, relative to US peers, is the late-stage growth capital that takes a clinical-stage neurotechnology company from Series B to commercial scale without requiring a US relocation. MindMaze stayed European; ONWARD listed on Euronext rather than relocating to the US; Neurosoft is operating from Campus Biotech Geneva with US clinical sites rather than US headquarters. Whether this pattern holds for the next cluster spinout depends on whether European late-stage venture capacity continues to scale alongside the EIF-anchored early-stage fund ecosystem.

What to watch

The first signal is which Lausanne-Geneva faculty member spins out the next company. The cluster’s combined research output suggests at least one more commercial entity over the next twenty-four months, with Micera’s neural prosthetics work and Ghezzi’s retinal prosthesis programme as the most visible candidates. The second signal is whether ONWARD Medical’s commercial trajectory on Euronext attracts US investor interest sufficient to justify a US dual listing or relocation, which would be a marker of European late-stage capital still falling short. The third signal is Neurosoft’s progression from intraoperative epilepsy-mapping into chronic-implantation indications, which will determine whether the Lacour electrode architecture becomes a true BCI competitor at scale or remains a surgical-mapping specialist.

The Lausanne-Geneva cluster has the academic depth, the clinical coordination, the public-capital infrastructure, and now visibly the commercial spinout cadence to operate as a serious European neurotechnology engine. The remaining question is whether the surrounding capital and policy environment can hold its commercial output inside Europe through Series C and beyond, or whether the cluster keeps shipping its companies to the US for late-stage growth.

Sources

• EPFL Neuro-X Institute (EPFL)
• EPFL Geneva associated campus (EPFL)
• The Center for Neuroprosthetics has moved to Campus Biotech (EPFL News)
• Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering (Wyss Center Geneva)
• Meet the Neurosoft Bioelectronics Team and Advisors (Neurosoft Bioelectronics)
• EPFL spin-off sets record for brain interface space for epilepsy monitoring (Startupticker)
• Walking naturally after spinal cord injury using a brain–spine interface (Lorach et al., Nature, 2023)
• ONWARD Medical (Euronext: ONWD)
• MindMaze company profile