MintNeuro raises $5 million to supply purpose-built chips to neural device makers

By Inside BCI · October 8, 2026

Every brain implant needs electronics small enough, frugal enough with power and safe enough to sit inside the body. MintNeuro, a London chip designer spun out of Imperial College London, says most of the companies building them still have to choose between two poor options: adapt general-purpose components never designed for the body, or spend years designing a chip of their own. On 7 October it announced $5 million in new funding to sell them a third: chips built for neural devices.

The round

Odyssey Ventures led the round. 33East, JSK Investments and Alumni Ventures joined, and Empirical Ventures, Jumpspace Ventures and other earlier backers invested again. MintNeuro will use the money to launch products, deliver more pre-release chips to partners, hire engineers and commercial staff, and strengthen its presence in the United States alongside its base in the UK and Europe.

The company’s last disclosed equity round was £1 million in November 2024, led by Empirical Ventures with the Imperial College Enterprise Fund and the conversion of a loan note from MedTech SuperConnector. In early 2025, MintNeuro and its research partners were awarded £17 million in non-dilutive funding for three projects in the UK Advanced Research and Invention Agency’s Precision Neurotechnologies programme, with MintNeuro leading custom chip development for each.

What MintNeuro sells

MintNeuro builds a modular set of chips for core jobs in a neural device, including sensing the body’s nerve signals, processing them, and delivering electrical pulses back to treat disease or restore function. A device maker can combine the blocks to build a smaller, lower-power device, including closed-loop systems that adjust stimulation to what they sense. Its target markets include brain-computer interfaces, neuromodulation systems, sensory prostheses and bioelectronic medicines. Its immediate focus is medical applications, and it describes its chips as serving neural devices from implants to wearables.

“Every neural device depends on the chips inside it,” said Dorian Haci, MintNeuro’s co-founder and chief executive. The company traces its technology to Imperial’s Next Generation Neural Interfaces Lab, led by co-founder and chief technology officer Tim Constandinou.

Who uses the chips

MintNeuro has delivered working chips and reached integration milestones with partners including Motif Neurotech and Amber Therapeutics.

Motif is a Houston company developing a small implant that stimulates the brain to treat depression that has not responded to other treatments. On 30 April, three days after Motif announced FDA approval to begin its first clinical trial, the two companies announced a multi-year agreement for MintNeuro to supply chips for Motif’s pre-clinical work and its early clinical and pivotal studies. MintNeuro’s sensing chip is already built into the devices Motif uses in pre-clinical work.

Amber Therapeutics, a UK medical technology company, is developing Amber-UI, an implant that stimulates the pudendal nerve and senses the body’s responses to adjust treatment of mixed urinary incontinence in women. Amber raised a $100 million Series A in June 2024, and MintNeuro has worked with it on a chipset for the therapy under an Innovate UK grant. MintNeuro’s chair, Tim Denison, a professor at the University of Oxford and a former vice president of research and core technology in Medtronic’s Restorative Therapies Group, co-founded Amber.

MintNeuro says a growing number of other neural device companies are evaluating or integrating its chips. It has not named them.

Why the chip layer is drawing money

Brain-computer interface device makers can raise far larger sums. Precision Neuroscience closed a $250 million Series D in September, fifty times MintNeuro’s round. MintNeuro is betting that most device makers will buy their neural chips, and leave chip design to a specialist.

It is one of several suppliers building that layer. This week Bridge Neurotech became the latest ultrasound brain-computer interface start-up to license Butterfly Network’s chips, five weeks after Merge Labs. In China, Tencent took a minority stake in Hangzhou neural chip designer Nanochap Electronics in May.

Not disclosed

MintNeuro’s valuation, the stage of the round and the size of each investor’s stake are not disclosed. The company has not disclosed revenue, chip prices, how many customers pay for its chips, or when its first products will be generally available. Whether any MintNeuro chip is yet inside a device implanted in a person is not public.

What to watch

Whether MintNeuro names further customers, particularly US brain-computer interface or neuromodulation companies.

Whether the implants in Motif’s first clinical trial, and later its pivotal trial, carry MintNeuro chips.

Whether MintNeuro publishes a product catalogue and launch dates for generally available chips.

Whether other device makers move from in-house chip design to bought-in neural chips.

Sources

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Cross-reference to prior InsideBCI coverage:

market MintNeuro Imperial-College-London Odyssey-Ventures Empirical-Ventures neural-interface-chips semiconductors BCI-supply-chain Motif-Neurotech Amber-Therapeutics Tim-Denison Dorian-Haci ARIA neuromodulation bioelectronic-medicine funding