INBRAIN Neuroelectronics has completed patient enrolment in the world’s first-in-human study of a graphene-based brain-computer interface, the Barcelona-headquartered neurotechnology company announced on 20 April. Ten patients were recruited and eight received the implant during brain tumour resection surgery at Salford Royal Hospital in Manchester, with no perioperative device failure observed. The study, registered as NCT06368310, is sponsored by the University of Manchester in partnership with the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust. It is the first complete human trial cohort for any graphene-based neural interface.
The primary objective was safety. Secondary objectives covered signal quality, stability, stimulation capability, and suitability for intraoperative use. These are the thresholds INBRAIN needs to clear before its BCI-Tx platform can advance toward the chronic-implant indications that define the commercial opportunity. Chief executive Carolina Aguilar said full results are due this year and described the milestone as a step toward commercialisation rather than further research-stage work.
A different electrode material
Most clinical-stage BCI programmes use metal-based electrodes (platinum, iridium oxide, titanium nitride) because the materials are well understood, well characterised in the regulatory record, and relatively easy to fabricate. Graphene is thinner (INBRAIN’s cortical interface is 10 micrometres, thinner than a human hair), more conductive per unit area, and unlike most metal electrodes can both record from and stimulate neural tissue with comparable fidelity. The company calls this combined read-write capability its BCI-Tx platform.
Graphene’s biocompatibility in long-term brain-tissue contact is one of the questions the Salford Royal study does not fully answer, since the trial was intraoperative rather than chronic. INBRAIN’s Breakthrough Device Designation from the FDA, granted in 2023 for adjunctive treatment of Parkinson’s disease, is the regulatory marker for where the platform is heading. The designation does not guarantee approval but signals FDA alignment on the underlying clinical need.
Backers and collaborators
INBRAIN closed a $50 million Series B in October 2024, led by imec.xpand, with new participation from EIC Fund, Fond ICO Next Tech, CDTI-Innvierte and Avançsa, and continued commitments from existing investors Asabys Partners, Aliath Bioventures and Vsquared. Total capital raised since inception is approximately $68 million. The round also included additional funding from Merck KGaA tied to a therapeutic-area collaboration. In September 2025, INBRAIN announced a know-how collaboration with Mayo Clinic to accelerate BCI-Tx development and commercialisation.
A €4 million grant from Spain’s PERTE Chip Program, announced May 2025, is funding fabrication and scale-up of the graphene interface. Earlier-stage work was funded by the European Commission’s Graphene Flagship, a ten-year research programme that began in 2013 and seeded the basic science now being commercialised. The World Economic Forum named INBRAIN a 2025 Technology Pioneer, a designation that reflects sector visibility more than technical validation but is useful for the speaking and policy forums where neurotechnology positioning gets built.
Sector context
The dominant read-side clinical-stage BCI programmes (Neuralink, Synchron, Precision Neuroscience, Paradromics) all use variants of metal-electrode arrays. Precision’s Layer 7 thin-film cortical array produced the first peer-reviewed intraoperative decoding results earlier this year. Synchron’s Stentrode uses a vascular-entry approach. ONWARD Medical, which raised €40.6 million last week, sits on the stimulation side of the field using spinal cord electrodes. INBRAIN is alone among clinical-stage players in running graphene rather than a metal.
If the graphene interface delivers on both signal fidelity and long-term biocompatibility, INBRAIN becomes a platform-level alternative rather than a point-solution competitor. If it does not, the company joins the list of electrode-material ambitions that failed to survive first-in-human transition. Completion of the Salford Royal trial moves INBRAIN past the most common failure point for novel electrode materials, which is the first surgical cohort. The larger question, chronic viability under continuous neural recording and stimulation, is the work of the next study.
Kostas Kostarelos, co-founder of INBRAIN and Professor of Nanomedicine at the University of Manchester, served as Chief Scientific Investigator. The company was spun out of the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2) in Barcelona in 2019. Full trial results, when released later this year, will determine whether INBRAIN can raise its next round at commercialisation-stage valuations or whether an interim bridge is required.