A Shanghai-headquartered non-invasive brain-computer interface company called BCI-Sonics closed a RMB 200 million Pre-A financing round on Tuesday 22 September 2026. Co-leads were HongShan, the post-2023 rebrand of Sequoia China, and Yunqi Partners. The Pre-A closed the same day Premier Li Qiang inspected brain-computer interface products at a Shanghai future-industries incubator and directed the expansion of “patient capital” (耐心资本) and the establishment of future-industry investment-growth and risk-sharing mechanisms.
The round
BCI-Sonics’ RMB 200 million (approximately USD 28 million) Pre-A financing closed with the following participation. Co-leads: HongShan and Yunqi Partners. New investors: Proxima Capital, Oriza Holdings, Xuhui Sci-Tech Innovation Investment (a Shanghai Xuhui District state-adjacent vehicle), and Moral Stone Investment. Existing investors following on: Matrix Partners China (MPCi) and Delian Capital. Xunguang Capital served as exclusive financial advisor.
Prior funding: an Angel round led by Matrix Partners China, then an Angel+ round co-led by Delian Capital and Daoyuan Capital. Total capital raised since the company’s founding in 2025 is roughly RMB 300 million. Post-money Pre-A valuation was not disclosed.
HongShan’s participation is the strategic centre of gravity in this round. HongShan is the operating entity that emerged from Sequoia Capital’s global split in June 2023, when the firm separated into Sequoia US, HongShan (China), and Peak XV Partners (India and Southeast Asia). Neil Shen (Shen Nanpeng) continues to lead the China entity. HongShan taking a co-lead position on a Chinese non-invasive BCI operator is the visible signal that the top of the Chinese venture-capital ladder is now allocating to the BCI category in named lead positions.
The company and founder
BCI-Sonics was founded in 2025 in Shanghai by Dr. Li Xin (李昕). Li holds a joint PhD in biomedical engineering from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Fraunhofer IGD in Germany. He joined GE Healthcare in 2015 and rose to Head of the GE Global Research Center China. He is a serial founder in medical imaging, ultrasound, artificial intelligence, and brain-computer interface. The core team is drawn from Tsinghua, Imperial College London, Shanghai Jiao Tong, and Zhejiang University. Specific CTO or Chief Scientist identities are not disclosed in the announcement materials.
The technology
BCI-Sonics’ modality is low-intensity transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS or LIFU) for brain stimulation, paired with a multimodal reading system. The reading side integrates functional ultrasound (fUS), electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and positron emission tomography (PET). Passive cavitation detection provides safety monitoring during ultrasound stimulation. The company describes a proprietary transcranial phase-correction algorithm for individualised skull calibration, which it says places it among a small number of tFUS/LIFU systems in China with that capability.
Two generations of the company’s focused-ultrasound BCI product line have reached R&D completion with safety reports filed. A Cortex Atlas interactive human brain map, integrated with an AI parameter-tuning platform, was launched in September 2026 alongside the Pre-A close.
Three product lines
BCI-Sonics is developing three parallel product lines. The Research line is a toolchain for neuroscience laboratories, unveiled at the China Neuroscience Society (CNS) 2026 meeting in September. The Clinical line targets pain, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, addiction, and sleep disorders, and includes ultrasound-mediated blood-brain-barrier opening for CNS drug delivery. The Technology/Consumer line is a wearable BCI terminal targeting sleep, focus, and emotional regulation.
Closed-loop ultrasound BCI clinical trials are scheduled to enter Q1 2027. No ClinicalTrials.gov or Chinese NMPA registration number has been disclosed. Strategic collaborations with international pharmaceutical companies on CNS drug-device combinations are referenced without named counterparties.
Announced use of proceeds: product research and development, core talent recruitment across AI decoding, clinical regulatory, and consumer hardware disciplines, clinical studies, and artificial-intelligence infrastructure including compute, data platforms, and model R&D.
Where BCI-Sonics sits in the Chinese BCI operator field
The Chinese BCI operator field that InsideBCI has been tracking splits into invasive and non-invasive branches. Invasive operators include Neuracle Medical Technology (holder of China’s first commercial invasive BCI clearance from the NMPA on 13 March 2026 for the NEO-ONE epidural spinal-cord-injury device), StairMed, NeuroXess, NeuCyber, and Weiling Medical. Non-invasive operators include BrainCo (EEG consumer and clinical) and Arfysica Innovation (non-invasive EEG plus exoskeleton rehabilitation). BCI-Sonics extends the non-invasive branch with the ultrasound modality specifically, which no other named Chinese operator at comparable stage has taken as its primary technology bet.
Ultrasound-modality BCI is a global category story, not a Chinese-only one. Merge Labs, the Sam Altman and Alex Blania venture, closed a $252 million seed round earlier in 2026 and licensed the Butterfly Network Poseidon ultrasound chip on 1 September 2026 for a non-invasive ultrasound BCI approach. Nudge, the Fred Ehrsam venture, closed a $100 million Series A led by Thrive Capital and Greenoaks for a headphone form-factor ultrasound BCI targeting addiction, pain and cognitive indications. BCI-Sonics is the first named Chinese operator at comparable stage in that same modality.
The Li Qiang timing
The Pre-A round closed on 22 September 2026. On the same day, Premier Li Qiang inspected brain-computer interface products at the Shanghai Future Kick-off Community (上海未来启点社区), a sci-tech innovation and incubation platform for future industries in Shanghai’s Minhang District orbit. Li Qiang directed the expansion of venture capital and “patient capital” (耐心资本) and the establishment of future-industry investment-growth and risk-sharing mechanisms.
There is no on-the-record statement linking the Pre-A round to the Premier’s inspection, and VCBeat frames the round as reflecting “consensus among leading domestic institutions” rather than a state-directed placement. The chronology stands on its own. A top-tier Chinese venture-capital lead (HongShan) and a state-adjacent Shanghai district vehicle (Xuhui Sci-Tech Innovation Investment) participating in a BCI Pre-A round on the same day the Premier makes an on-record BCI inspection is either coordination or coincidence. Neither would be surprising in the current Chinese industrial-policy cycle.
Chinese BCI capital field context
Per IT Juzi data cited in VCBeat’s coverage, Chinese BCI operator financing in the first half of 2026 recorded more than 60 deals with over RMB 7 billion committed. That first-half tally alone already exceeds the entire 2025 full-year Chinese BCI deal count of 49 and total value of RMB 2.723 billion. The pace of Chinese BCI capital formation is accelerating on both deal count and total-value dimensions.
Where this lands on the four-jurisdiction posture map
The Dargentic Intelligence Report Issue 01 classified four global regulatory postures on brain-computer interfaces: Rights-First (Chile), Horizontal Regulator (EU with AI Act and GDPR), State-Patchwork (US with Colorado, California, Montana, Connecticut neural-data laws enacted), and Industrial Builder (China and South Korea). The BCI-Sonics Pre-A close, arriving in coordinated timing with the Premier’s on-record BCI inspection, is a fresh Industrial Builder data point. State-adjacent capital flows into a named commercial operator, backed by top-tier private venture capital, in a jurisdiction where the regulatory pathway (NMPA clearance for invasive devices, September 2026 NMPA AI-EEG data-quality standard for medical devices, MIIT industrial-cluster policy) is being purpose-built alongside the capital allocation.
Not disclosed
The company’s registered Chinese-language corporate name is not disclosed in the accessible English announcement materials. Post-money valuation is not disclosed. Named pharmaceutical partners referenced in the CNS drug-device collaboration commentary are not disclosed. Specific CTO or Chief Scientist identities beyond founder Li Xin are not disclosed. HongShan’s prior direct or indirect investments in Chinese brain-computer interface operators are not disclosed in this materials pass. Whether Yunqi Partners is fully private venture or holds state-limited-partner commitments is not disclosed. The exact NMPA regulatory pathway BCI-Sonics is pursuing for its clinical product line is not disclosed.
What to watch
Whether BCI-Sonics files a Chinese NMPA regulatory submission for its closed-loop ultrasound BCI clinical trial in Q1 2027 as planned, and which indication is prioritised. NMPA registration under any of the June 2026 BCI medical-device classification and naming guidelines would be a category signal.
Whether HongShan follows the BCI-Sonics Pre-A with a Series A lead position on the same operator or on other named Chinese BCI operators in the coming quarters. A HongShan repeat position would indicate a category thesis, not a one-off placement.
Whether Xuhui Sci-Tech Innovation Investment participates in further Shanghai-headquartered BCI operator financings. Shanghai district-level state-adjacent capital deploying at named-investor scale is the mechanism the Premier’s 22 September remarks pointed toward.
Whether Merge Labs, Nudge, or other US-headquartered non-invasive ultrasound BCI operators announce clinical-trial timelines that overlap with BCI-Sonics’ Q1 2027 target. Head-to-head clinical-timeline competition between US and Chinese ultrasound-BCI operators would be a first for the sector.
Whether other Chinese BCI operators in the Neuracle, StairMed, NeuroXess, NeuCyber, Weiling, BrainCo, Arfysica field close comparable venture rounds in the coming quarters at top-tier VC lead pricing.
Sources
Primary:
Cross-reference to prior InsideBCI coverage:
- 24 September 2026: Chinese Premier Li Qiang publicly names brain-computer interfaces a ‘blue ocean’ on a Shanghai inspection tour
- 17 September 2026: China NMPA issues world-first AI-EEG data medical-device standard
- 14 September 2026: Three Chinese BCI operators are in the IPO queue at once
- 1 September 2026: Merge Labs and Butterfly Network sign Poseidon ultrasound-chip BCI licensing deal