Epia Neuro, a new brain-computer interface company focused on stroke rehabilitation, launched on April 2 with a platform that combines a minimally invasive implantable neural interface with a wearable grip-assist device and real-time AI decoding. The company plans to begin first-in-human system demonstrations later this year at the Department of Neurosurgery at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.
The company is led by Michel Maharbiz, the UC Berkeley electrical engineering and bioengineering professor who founded iota Biosciences in 2017. Iota developed miniaturised bioelectronic implants and was later acquired by Astellas Pharma. Epia advances work that originated at iota but applies it to a different clinical target: restoring motor function in stroke survivors who retain the neural intent to move but have lost the ability to translate that intent into action.
Epia’s system consists of three components. The implantable BCI is placed within the skull in a procedure the company says takes less than an hour and does not pierce the dura, the membrane surrounding the brain. It supports both sensing and stimulation — a read-write architecture that allows the device to both decode neural signals and deliver targeted electrical feedback. The implant is charged wirelessly through a non-invasive headset, requires no chest-implanted pulse generator, and is designed to be replaceable or upgradeable without additional invasive surgery.
The second component is a closed-loop software layer that interprets neural intent in real time and fuses it with contextual data from external sensors. The third is an upper-limb grip-assist motor prosthetic — a motorised glove — that translates decoded intent into physical hand movement. The company describes the glove as deliberately simple and replaceable, designed for daily use rather than clinical settings alone.
The approach positions Epia in an emerging category of BCI companies that pair implanted neural interfaces with assistive robotics for rehabilitation rather than communication. Where companies like Paradromics and Synchron focus primarily on speech restoration or digital device control for people with paralysis, Epia is targeting the larger population of stroke survivors who have partial motor deficits. The company estimates that roughly 60,000 of the 690,000 new stroke survivors in the US each year could be candidates for its products, representing what it describes as a market opportunity exceeding $5 billion.
Maharbiz serves as CEO. Gil Mandelbaum, a neuroscientist with over fifteen years of experience in neural hardware and software systems, is chief technology and science officer. Michelle Patruno, who has scaled companies from early stage through IPO, is chief operating officer. Ehud Gelblum, a former Wall Street technology equity research analyst, is chief financial officer.
The advisory board includes Mark Richardson of Massachusetts General Hospital, Netanel Ben-Shalom of Lenox Hill Hospital, Joshua Aronson of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Bernardo Sabatini of Harvard Medical School and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Jan Rabaey of UC Berkeley, David Lin of Massachusetts General Hospital, and Mark Slutsky of Northwestern University, who also serves as president of the Brain Computer Interface Society.
Epia has not disclosed the amount of funding raised or its investors. The company said it plans to expand beyond stroke into cognitive decline, Parkinson’s disease, and epilepsy, though no timelines were provided for those indications.
The launch adds another entrant to a BCI sector that raised over $960 million in Q1 2026. It is also one of the first companies to explicitly design its implant for upgradability — a practical consideration as the field’s hardware capabilities continue to advance faster than the multi-year clinical trial cycles required to bring devices to market.