The smallest rounds in the last two weeks funded some of the sharpest progress. Fluent's AUD $2M pre-seed is already producing subscalp signal quality its founders compare to intracranial approaches, and Neurobell's $5.5M round did double duty, bringing in Parkview Health as both investor and reference customer ahead of a US launch. Capital efficiency, not check size, eventually determines how far these companies move.
The larger players made a different kind of progress. Neuralink's first transdural implant and Coherence Neuro's first-in-human placements both removed a surgical or regulatory barrier rather than adding capital, and Saluda's new FDA-approved paddle lead opens a channel closed-loop stimulation hadn't reached before. Chinese BCI company Gestala moved on multiple fronts, closing another $62M in funding and opening a dual Chengdu-Shanghai headquarters within six months of launch.
Neuralink reported its first transdural implant, placing electrode threads through the intact dura mater without the surgical step of removing it. The procedure, performed at Toronto Western Hospital in May, used a redesigned insertion needle built to penetrate a membrane more than ten times thicker than the threads themselves while avoiding the blood vessels beneath it. The participant controlled a cursor with their thoughts within an hour of surgery. Eliminating the durectomy removes one of the more delicate manual steps from the operation, a step the company and its well-known founder frame as central to scaling implantation this year.
Gestala formally opened its Shanghai headquarters and initiated the first phase of its Chengdu "super factory" on June 26, and then closed a RMB 420M (~$62M) round a week later. The financing was led by Huaying Capital, with Sequoia China and C Capital among the new backers. The funding brings the ultrasound BCI startup's total raised to roughly RMB 570M within six months of launch. Gestala's Chengdu site handles core R&D, clinical translation, and device production, while the Shanghai headquarters focuses on AI foundation models for the brain.
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Fluent raised AUD $2M in pre-seed funding to advance its subscalp interface for speech restoration. The University of Melbourne spinout's device sits beneath the scalp but outside the skull, capturing motor cortex signals with a lower surgical burden than the intracortical, endovascular, and ECoG approaches of its competitors. Preliminary testing used 144 electrodes to record brain activity as participants spoke, mimed, and imagined speaking, with results the company says are comparable to intracranial electrodes. The round drew backing from the University of Melbourne's Genesis Pre-Seed Fund, Pacific Channel, and Jumpspace Ventures, among others.
Saluda Medical received FDA approval for CAP24, a new surgical lead for its closed-loop Evoke spinal cord stimulation system. Unlike the thin, wire-like leads placed through a needle, a paddle lead is a flat, ribbon-shaped electrode array implanted surgically against the spinal cord, giving more stable, precise contact with the tissue. CAP24 senses the spinal cord's electrical response to stimulation and adjusts the therapy automatically, extending Saluda's closed-loop approach. Paddle leads are the format neurosurgeons and orthopedic surgeons prefer, a group that performs roughly 30% of US spinal cord stimulation procedures and one Saluda had not previously been able to reach. The company plans a phased US launch in the second half of 2026.
Coherence Neuro placed its investigational cancer implant in three patients during brain tumor resection surgery at Royal Melbourne Hospital, marking the company's first in-human move. Led by Dr. Andrew Morokoff, who also performed Synchron's first implant, Coherence's trial will evaluate the cortical probe's ability to map and stimulate brain activity intraoperatively with high spatial resolution. Each placement lasted roughly 30 minutes. The data will be used for SOMA-1, Coherence's second-generation implant designed to sense and stimulate the tumor microenvironment as a longer-term therapeutic approach to brain cancer.
Neurobell secured $5.5M to support the US launch of Luna, its AI-enabled EEG monitor for detecting neonatal seizures. The round was led by Irish investment firm Elkstone, with participation from US health system Parkview Health alongside existing backers Furthr VC, Atlantic Bridge, and Enterprise Ireland. Roughly two-thirds of neonatal seizures show no outward symptoms, and delayed detection compounds the risk of long-term brain damage. The funding will support Neurobell's FDA submission and a new US office in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Neuronostics raised £3M to advance BioEP, a digital biomarker platform for epilepsy diagnosis and prognosis. The University of Exeter spinout will use the round, co-led by Empirical Ventures and The FSE Group, alongside a £400k Innovate UK Investor Partnerships grant, to fund a planned FDA submission, expand NHS adoption, and extend the platform toward measuring treatment response in pharmaceutical trials.
Meta released Brain2Qwerty v2, a non-invasive system that decodes typed sentences from magnetoencephalography recordings without a surgical implant. Trained on roughly 22,000 sentences from nine volunteers, the model reached 61% average word accuracy, with its best participant hitting 78%. The release coincided with the Nature Neuroscience publication of Brain2Qwerty v1 and the open-source release of the training code for both versions through Meta's Digital Brain Project. The company describes the work as research rather than a near-term product, though it slightly narrows the performance gap that has long separated non-invasive and surgical BCIs.
Cumulus Neuroscience published results from its CNS-101 study in Frontiers in Digital Health, reporting that its NeuLogiq platform was feasible, well tolerated, and usable for at-home cognitive and EEG assessment in people with mild Alzheimer's disease. The 52-week study, designed with ten pharmaceutical companies and run with the University of Cambridge, combines a wireless EEG headset with tablet-based cognitive tasks to capture frequent, longitudinal data outside the clinic.
Control Bionics launched a Share Purchase Plan to raise up to AUD $500,000 at 7.5 cents per share, following an AUD $9.5M placement to professional investors announced a week earlier. The two-pronged raise will fund the company's pipeline of non-invasive initiatives and bolster working capital. Control Bionics makes EMG-based assistive communication devices, including the NeuroNode, and has recently been building out US distribution and reimbursement pathways for the platform.
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