Tag: Michael-Mager

3 articles

Market Moves

Precision Neuroscience closes oversubscribed $250 million Series D co-led by Pershing Square and the Ackman Oxman Institute

New York-headquartered invasive brain-computer interface operator Precision Neuroscience closed a $250 million oversubscribed Series D on Thursday 24 September 2026. Three co-leads: Pershing Square (Bill Ackman's investment firm), the Ackman Oxman Institute (the philanthropic BCI-and-neurotechnology venture Bill Ackman and Neri Oxman announced in August 2026 after their daughter Lucy's brain hemorrhage), and an undisclosed leading life-sciences investment fund. Additional participation from Duquesne Family Office (Stanley Druckenmiller), B Capital, ARK Invest, Invus, Mubadala Capital, Mirae Asset Capital, Korea Investment Partners, Hitachi Ventures, JSL Health Capital, and others. Total capital raised since 2021 founding is now $430 million. Proceeds will expand the clinical programme, advance Layer 7 through the next stages of FDA review, and build the infrastructure required for commercialisation. Precision was founded in 2021 by Ben Rapoport (Neuralink founding-team scientist, left Neuralink in 2018, Mount Sinai neurosurgeon), Michael Mager (CEO), Demetrios Papageorgiou, and Mark Hettick. Layer 7 is a thin-film 4,096-electrode microelectrode array that conforms to the cortical surface, non-penetrating, safely removable. Layer 7 holds an FDA 510(k) clearance authorising commercial use for recording, monitoring, and stimulating on the cortical surface for implantation durations of up to thirty days (granted April 2025), and has been used across 100-plus patient procedures at 18 medical institutions including the University of Pennsylvania Perelman, University of Chicago Medicine, Mount Sinai, and WVU Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute. Precision runs a wholly-owned MEMS manufacturing facility in Texas and holds a Medtronic commercial partnership. BrainGate founder and 2026 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering laureate John Donoghue joined as Scientific Advisor on 23 July 2026. The Series D closes two days after Chinese non-invasive BCI operator BCI-Sonics closed a HongShan and Yunqi Partners-led RMB 200 million Pre-A in Shanghai on 22 September, the same day Premier Li Qiang inspected brain-computer interface products in Shanghai. Two top-tier private-capital signals into invasive and non-invasive brain-computer interface operators, one on each side of the Pacific, inside a single week.

Sep 25

Industry News

Precision Neuroscience appoints John Donoghue as scientific advisor

On Thursday 23 July 2026, New York-based Precision Neuroscience announced the appointment of John Donoghue - founding investigator of the BrainGate consortium at Brown, co-founder of Cyberkinetics, and inaugural director of the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva - as a scientific advisor to the company. Donoghue will advise Precision's scientific and engineering teams on device design, signal decoding, and clinical strategy. The appointment lands two days after Precision's non-paralysed cursor-control demonstration across its 15-plus academic-medical-centre clinical network, and at exactly the moment ABILITY Neurotech, the Wyss Center spin-out whose technology was conceived under Donoghue's own directorship, prepares to begin its own chronic first-in-human implantation in ALS patients.

Jul 25

Industry News

Precision Neuroscience demonstrates thought-based gaming in non-paralysed volunteers

On Tuesday 21 July 2026, Precision Neuroscience announced that neurosurgical patients without paralysis, temporarily implanted with its Layer 7 subdural microelectrode array during scheduled tumor or epilepsy-monitoring procedures, controlled cursors and played Mario Kart, Pong and Fruit Ninja, scrolled Instagram, and answered FaceTime calls with their thoughts. Chief clinical officer Jayme Strauss confirmed the array is removed at bedside in under five minutes at the end of each participant's hospital stay, with the first permanent implant targeted for early 2028.

Jul 21