Sunday, September 13, 2026
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Tag: non-invasive-BCI

13 articles

Industry News

Apple acquires neural-sensor startup Sonera Magnetics

Apple's acquisition of Berkeley-based magnetic-sensor startup Sonera Magnetics, closed in May 2026 and disclosed publicly on 8 September 2026 via the European Commission's Digital Markets Act acquisitions database, is the company's first move from hosting third-party brain-computer interface signals to owning proprietary neural-sensor IP. Sonera builds solid-state acoustically-driven ferromagnetic resonance (ADFMR) magnetometers, a room-temperature alternative to SQUID-based magnetoencephalography (MEG). The company raised US$11 million in seed financing in September 2023 from a lead-heavy syndicate including Founders Fund, Benchmark, Amplify Partners, IVP, Craft Ventures, and 8VC. Deal terms were not disclosed. Sonera's website was taken offline post-acquisition. Apple's prior BCI-adjacent moves were the AirPods ear-canal biosignal patent (filed January 2023), the BCI HID accessibility protocol for iOS 26, iPadOS 26 and visionOS 26 launched with Synchron on 13 May 2025, and hosting of Cognixion's non-invasive EEG clinical trial on Vision Pro from October 2025. Owning Sonera's magnetic-sensor IP puts Apple directly against Meta's Neural Band (surface EMG) and the non-surgical BCI operator field (Merge Labs ultrasound, Subsense nanoparticle, Neurable EEG earbuds).

Sep 9

Market Moves

NMPA clears Tiankai Suishi's non-invasive EEG cap for cognitive-impairment diagnosis

China's National Medical Products Administration approved a non-invasive EEG-cap diagnostic device made by Tianjin-based Tiankai Suishi Intelligent Technology on 19 August 2026 for assessing cognitive impairment. The device sits in the diagnostic tier of China's growing brain-computer interface pipeline: Class II non-invasive rather than the Class III invasive category cleared by Neuracle in March 2026. Tiankai Suishi is a Tianjin University-linked startup founded 2023, led by Gu Bin, with a depression-diagnosis product also filed with NMPA. The approval extends China's Industrial Builder posture from a single invasive-BCI flagship into diagnostic-device territory anchored on the country's ageing-population indications: Alzheimer's, schizophrenia-linked cognitive dysfunction, and depression.

Sep 3

Industry News

Naomi Bashkansky quits OpenAI to join BCI startup Conduit

On 23 July 2026, Naomi Bashkansky resigned from OpenAI's alignment team after eighteen months to join Conduit, a San Francisco non-invasive brain-computer interface startup co-founded by Rio Popper and Clem von Stengel. Conduit claims to have collected approximately 10,000 hours of neuro-language data from thousands of paid participants over six months, funded through undisclosed capital. Bashkansky joins as Founding Researcher.

Aug 7

Market Moves

Delian Capital partner warns of a Chinese BCI bubble

VCBeat, the Chinese healthcare-investment media outlet, published an on-record investor take on the Chinese brain-computer interface sector on 2 August 2026. Delian Capital partner Jiang Donghui framed the sector as at risk of a bubble cycle before maturity, laid out a four-quadrant investment matrix based on demand and technological advancement, and named Chinese BCI companies across invasive, semi-invasive and non-invasive paths. H1 2026 financing alone accounted for approximately 60 per cent of the sector's thirteen-year total.

Aug 2

Industry News

Chinese BCI programmes produced four tangible results in July

In one month, four separate Chinese brain-computer interface programmes each produced a public result. Neuracle wrote the world's first commercial prescription for an invasive BCI at Huashan Hospital on 13 July. NeuroXess ran a two-patient cross-city Chinese chess demonstration between Shanghai and Nanchang. StairMed's investigational trial put three quadriplegic patients into paid remote work. And at the World AI Conference in Shanghai, a paralysed fine-arts graduate from Shenzhen demoed a mind-controlled wheelchair he had built himself with LLM-assisted DIY.

Jul 31

Policy & Regulation

Beijing Tiantan Hospital seeds Xizang's first plateau BCI centre at Lhasa People's Hospital

Xinhua reported on 9 July 2026 that Xizang (Tibet Autonomous Region)'s first plateau brain-computer interface clinical application centre was inaugurated at Lhasa People's Hospital. A medical assistance team from Beijing Tiantan Hospital, Capital Medical University, introduced the non-invasive EEG-based BCI technology, which drives exoskeleton and robotic-arm actuators for motor rehabilitation. The centre sits within a six-year Tiantan-Lhasa department-support partnership dating to 2020, and targets cerebral haemorrhage, cerebral ischemia, TBI, spinal cord injury, and peripheral nerve injury indications.

Jul 10

Market Moves

CNBC profiles BrainCo as the Hangzhou non-invasive BCI leader runs up to its Hong Kong IPO

CNBC published a video interview by China reporter Elaine Yu with Nyx He, Partner and Senior Vice President at BrainCo, on 10 July 2026. The interview lands six months after BrainCo confidentially filed for a Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing on 12 January 2026 with CICC and UBS Group AG as arrangers, and six months after the company closed a ¥2 billion (approximately US$286 million) financing round co-led by IDG Capital and Walden International on 8 January 2026. BrainCo is one of Hangzhou's Six Little Dragons alongside DeepSeek, Unitree Robotics, Game Science, DEEP Robotics, and Manycore Tech.

Jul 10

Policy & Regulation

China's NMPA locks BCI device classification: every implant is Class III, one narrow Class II lane

China's National Medical Products Administration issued Announcement No. 24 (2026) on 29 June 2026, releasing final Guiding Principles for the Classification and Definition of Brain-Computer Interface Medical Device Products plus a companion Generic Naming Guidelines. Every invasive BCI is Class III. Non-invasive BCIs are Class III by default. Non-invasive stroke-motor rehabilitation devices are Class II only if they do not incorporate artificial intelligence.

Jul 4

Research

An Imperial-Tsinghua BCI lets ten healthy people control a pair of extra robotic arms while balancing a ball with their own hands

Tianyu Jia and Dario Farina at Imperial College London, with collaborators at Tsinghua University and Southeast University Nanjing, published a Nature Communications paper on 2 July 2026 describing a tactile-encoded non-invasive BCI in which ten healthy participants controlled four supernumerary robotic degrees of freedom concurrently with a bimanual ball-balancing task, reaching 74.79 per cent single-task and 59.69 per cent dual-task online accuracy after three days of training.

Jul 2