BrainCo is developing a brain-stimulation wearable it pitches as an electronic GLP-1

By Inside BCI · Edited by Velco Dar · November 4, 2026

Eli Lilly sold $16 billion of Mounjaro and Zepbound in the third quarter of 2026. A Chinese brain-technology company says a wearable it is developing could curb appetite through brain stimulation and compete for that spending.

What BrainCo said

BrainCo is developing a device that it says could suppress appetite through brain stimulation, founding partner Nyx He told Bloomberg in an interview at the Bloomberg Tech London event, published on 3 November 2026. Nyx He described it as effectively an electronic version of GLP-1 obesity drugs and said the company aims to bring it to market within two to three years, first in China and possibly later in the United States. BrainCo may sell separate medical and consumer versions.

BrainCo has not named the device or said which part of the brain or nerves it would stimulate, how often it would be worn, what it would cost or what regulatory approval it would seek. ClinicalTrials.gov lists no study sponsored by BrainCo, and the company has published no trial data for the device.

The company

BrainCo was founded in 2015 out of the Harvard Innovation Labs and is now based in Hangzhou. It sells non-invasive headsets for autism, ADHD and insomnia, some of which stimulate neural activity as well as recording it. It also makes prosthetic hands and supplies robotic hands to China’s humanoid robot makers. It raised about RMB 2 billion in a round co-led by IDG Capital and Walden International, disclosed in January 2026, and filed confidentially for a Hong Kong listing the same month, Bloomberg reported. Nyx He declined to comment on listing plans or any pre-IPO fundraising, and said BrainCo may move into implanted devices in the future.

Why it matters

Obesity and diabetes drugs now dominate Lilly’s sales. Mounjaro and Zepbound made up 56 per cent of the company’s $65.2 billion revenue in 2025, and Novo Nordisk sold DKK 79.1 billion of Wegovy. In China, Lilly said Mounjaro’s addition to the national reimbursement list in the first quarter of 2026 lowered prices, and the National Health Commission and 15 other government departments launched a weight-management campaign in June 2024, with goals set over about three years.

The published evidence for non-invasive stimulation as an obesity treatment is limited. A 2023 meta-analysis of 19 randomised trials with 571 participants in total found that transcranial magnetic stimulation cut weight by about 3.3 kilograms more than sham, and transcranial direct current stimulation by about 0.8 kilograms. A 241-person sham-controlled trial of Neurovalens’s Modius Lean headset, published in 2025, missed its weight-loss endpoints, although it reported a larger fall in visceral fat. In the STEP 1 and SURMOUNT-1 obesity trials, people on semaglutide lost about 15 per cent of body weight and those on the highest tirzepatide dose about 21 per cent, against 2 to 3 per cent on placebo. BrainCo has published no data on its device, so whether a wearable can approach drug-level weight loss is untested.

Not disclosed

BrainCo has not disclosed the device’s name, mechanism, target, price, development stage, clinical plans, the regulatory pathway it will use in China, or the timing and valuation of its Hong Kong listing.

What to watch

Whether BrainCo registers a clinical trial for the device.

Whether it seeks approval as a medical device from China’s National Medical Products Administration or sells a consumer version first.

Whether BrainCo’s Hong Kong prospectus becomes public and describes the obesity programme.

Sources

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Cross-reference to prior InsideBCI coverage:

market BrainCo China Hangzhou obesity GLP-1 neuromodulation wearables Nyx-He Eli-Lilly Novo-Nordisk Hong-Kong-IPO