Reading your brain without opening your skull: ultrasound BCIs get funded

Most brain-computer interfaces that work well start with a surgeon. Bridge Neurotech, which came out of stealth on October 6 with $13.5 million, wants to skip the operating room and read brain activity with ultrasound, straight through the skull.

The company also signed a research deal with Butterfly Network, which makes ultrasound on a chip. Butterfly already supplies the same technology to Merge Labs, another brain-interface startup, so one hardware maker now sits underneath two of the big no-surgery bets.

The surgeons still have the money

Implants aren't going anywhere. Precision Neuroscience raised a $250 million Series D in September, taking its total to $430 million. ReEmerge closed a $37 million Series A for an implant meant to restore executive function after traumatic brain injury by stimulating hub regions of the brain. In London, MintNeuro raised $5 million in a round led by Odyssey Ventures to build implant chips for other device makers.

Ultrasound's appeal needs no explaining: nobody drills into your head. The catch is signal. Bone scatters sound, and an electrode sitting on the cortex will always hear neurons more clearly than a sensor outside the skull. Bridge is betting that decent signals without surgery can reach millions of people a neurosurgery waiting list never will. It's a smart bet. It's also unproven.

Sources: The Next Web, Yahoo Finance, Tech Funding News.