Photo courtesy of Synchron
New York-based Synchron, a brain-computer interface (BCI) company, has raised $200 million in Series D funding, bringing its total raise to $345 million.
Double Point Ventures led the round, with participation from existing investors ARCH Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Bezos Expeditions, NTI and METIS.
New investors include the Australian National Reconstruction Fund (NRF), T.Rx Capital, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), K5 Global, Protocol Labs and IQT.
WHAT IT DOES
Synchron's Stentrode BCI is a non-surgical endovascular brain-computer interface platform designed to help improve mobility, communication and independence for individuals with paralysis.
It's placed in the brain via a non-surgical catheter procedure and translates brain activity into digital commands by interfacing with the motor cortex through the blood vessels, recording and transmitting neural signals.
The BCI allows one to control digital devices hands-free and has been placed in 10 paralysis patients in clinical trials in Australia and the U.S.
The company will use the funds to accelerate trials and commercialization of its BCI. It also plans to expand its operations in New York, where its cognitive AI division will train models that learn from brain data, and San Diego, where its engineering hub is established.
"This funding brings us closer to commercializing the Stentrode BCI platform, while accelerating development of a major breakthrough in the field – a next-generation, transcatheter high-channel whole-brain interface," Tom Oxley, CEO and founder of Synchron, said in a statement.
MARKET SNAPSHOT
Synchron secured an oversubscribed $75 million Series C funding round in 2022, bringing its total raise at the time to $145 million. A year before, the company scored $40 million in Series B funding.
In 2017, the company garnered $10 million in Series A financing.
In August, Synchron announced that Mark Jackson, an ALS patient from its FDA-approved COMMAND trial, was the first person to control an iPad using its BCI using only his thoughts.
The company released a video showing Jackson using an iPad controlled entirely by his thoughts.
Jackson received Synchron’s Stentrode, which integrates with Apple’s Switch Control accessibility feature, allowing him to type, navigate and open apps using his thoughts instead of physical movement.
In May, Synchron announced that it would be the first BCI company to reach native integration with Apple's BCI HID profile, which recognizes neural interfaces as a native input category.
Apple and Synchron said the integration will allow for voice-free and hands-free digital access to individuals with motor impairment, including ALS, stroke and spinal cord injury patients.
Synchron announced that it leveraged NVIDIA's Holoscan platform in January to enhance its implantable BCI by improving real-time edge AI capabilities for on-device neural processing, improving signal processing and multi-AI inference technology, and exploring the development of a foundation model for brain inference.
