#43 Nobel Science, First Sales, and Fresh Capital for BCI Builders: Neurotech Goes Mainstream:

Neurotech PulseOct 31, 2026

#43 Nobel Science, First Sales, and Fresh Capital for BCI Builders: Neurotech Goes Mainstream:

Nobel x Optogenetics + Neuracle Sales, FDA TMS, Pivotal IDEs, SetPoint.

Oct 31

Welcome to Neurotech Pulse – Issue #43! October handed neurotech its biggest mainstream moment in years: a Nobel Prize for optogenetics, & the first real sales numbers for a commercial brain implant. Add a wave of FDA clearances and pivotal-trial approvals, and the field looks less like a frontier and more like an industry.

Our Case Study Spotlight features SetPoint Medical, whose vagus nerve implant is now treating rheumatoid arthritis patients in routine clinical practice.

⚡️ Neurotech Newsflash

A Nobel for optogenetics (Science): Stanford’s Karl Deisseroth received the 2026 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for optogenetics, the light-based technique for controlling specific neurons that now underpins a generation of circuit neuroscience and, increasingly, therapy. (Read more)
The first commercial BCI sales numbers (Commercial): Neuracle disclosed it has sold 13 NEO-ONE spinal cord injury systems since July at a listed price of roughly $70K each, with 8 implanted. (Read more)
Three years of restored sight (Clinical): Science Corp. reported 36-month results from its PRIMA retinal implant trial, showing durable vision restoration in patients blinded by geographic atrophy. Durability data is exactly what payers and regulators will ask for next. (Read more)
TMS gets shorter and broader (Regulatory): BTL’s EXOMIND picked up new FDA clearances for OCD, depression with comorbid anxiety, and adolescent patients, plus an intermittent theta burst protocol with sessions as short as three minutes. (Read more)
A busy month for pivotal trials (Clinical): NeuWire won IDE approval for its STROKE-REWIRE pivotal study in chronic ischemic stroke, Cadence got the go-ahead for a multicenter epilepsy study, Newronika implanted the first ADVENT pivotal participant, and Salvia treated its first US patient in a migraine pivotal. (Read more)

💰 Notable Funding

The seed round everyone’s arguing about: Sabi raised a $50M seed led by Vinod Khosla at a reported $600M valuation, with Accel, DST Global, and Initialized also in, to build a brain-reading wearable cap. (Read more)
Butterfly picks a second ultrasound BCI partner: Bridge Neurotech launched with $13.5M from General Catalyst and signed a multi-year R&D agreement with Butterfly Network. (Read more)
China’s ultrasound BCI bet: BCI-Sonics raised a ~$30M Pre-A co-led by HongShan and Yunqi for focused ultrasound brain-computer interfaces. (Read more)
Chips built for neural devices: MintNeuro raised $5M to scale its purpose-built chip platform for neural implants and BCIs. (Read more)
Studying whole human brains outside the body: Bexorg received up to $28.3M from ARPA-H for its ExOBrain whole-human-brain platform. (Read more)

🧠 Neurotech Trends

Neural data governance gets operational: The UN warned against technology used to read citizens’ minds, the OECD published neurodata governance evidence from innovators, and China opened consultations on national standards for non-invasive BCIs. The conversation has moved from principles to rulebooks. (Read more)
Brain foundation models scale up: Neuralink shared results from pretraining on 50,000 hours of unlabelled brain data, while new benchmarks test how well models transfer across animals and brain regions. Data volume is becoming a moat. (Read more)
ADHD gets a three-part signal: First human data for an orexin agonist, Firefly and NeuroSigma partnering on the first FDA-cleared non-drug treatment for paediatric ADHD, and a growing argument that ADHD is about motivation rather than attention. Drugs, devices, and diagnosis are moving at once. (Read more)
Neurotech beyond the medical device: Delphi backed Synaptrix as a tech interface rather than a medtech company, and Sat Pugnet’s Phase Lock manifesto frames BCI as a tool for preserving human agency alongside AI. Expect more companies to pitch themselves outside the FDA lane. (Read more)

📘 Neurotech Article

How the brain separates imagined and spoken speech: A Nature Neuroscience paper maps the neural architecture behind imagined versus overt speech motor dynamics, directly relevant to how speech BCIs decode intent. (Read more)
Mice with half a brain, completed by human organoids: Researchers removed part of the mouse brain and filled the space with human brain organoids, raising both scientific and ethical questions about hybrid brains. (Read more)
One needle-thin implant, three jobs: A new implant combines multiple functions in a single needle-thin device, cutting the number of probes needed for recording and intervention. (Read more)
Wearables and implants that talk to each other: A Science paper demonstrates an in-body networking system linking wearable and implantable therapeutics. (Read more)
Sound-timed stimulation boosts brain clearance in sleep: Phase-locked auditory stimulation increased cerebrospinal fluid flow during sleep, pointing to a non-invasive route for supporting waste clearance. (Read more)
LLMs push the P300 speller near its limit: Large language models brought P300 speller performance close to its theoretical optimum, a cheap upgrade for non-invasive communication BCIs. (Read more)

🌐 Neurotech Edu. and Events

BCI Readiness Forum
📅 Date: November 4, 2026 | 📍 Manhattan, New York, NY
Why Attend the Event? Neurotech Futures and Alumni Ventures co-host an afternoon of lightning talks and discussion on how ready BCIs are for patients, payers, and investors. Good for attending if you’re a BCI founder, investor, or operator in New York looking for a focused, high-signal room. Registrations are subject to approval.
Link to register: Register here
New York Brain-Computer Interface Symposium (NYBCI)
📅 Date: November 4–6, 2026 | 📍 New York, NY
Why Attend the Event? Hosted by Mount Sinai, NYBCI brings together neurosurgeons, engineers, startups, investors, regulators, and patient advocates to focus on moving BCIs from bench to bedside, with leading implant companies regularly on stage. Good for attending if you work on the surgical, clinical, or commercial translation of brain-computer interfaces.
Link to register: Register here
Neurotech Leaders Forum
📅 Date: November 9–10, 2026 | 📍 San Francisco, CA
Why Attend the Event? Neurotech Reports’ annual forum gathers executives, investors, and clinicians for candid discussion on the business of neurotechnology, from funding and reimbursement to commercial strategy. Good for attending if you’re a neurotech founder, executive, investor, or business development lead.
Link to register: Register here
Focused Ultrasound Foundation 20th Anniversary
📅 Date: November 11–13, 2026 | 📍 Hilton McLean Tysons Corner, McLean, Virginia
Why Attend the Event? Three days with patients, researchers, clinicians, and industry leaders marking two decades of focused ultrasound and looking ahead at its future, including in neuromodulation and the brain. Good for attending if you work on ultrasound-based therapies or BCIs, or follow non-invasive brain interventions.
Link to register: Register here
SfN Neuroscience 2026
📅 Date: November 14–18, 2026 | 📍 Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C.
Why Attend the Event? The world’s largest neuroscience meeting, spanning basic science, clinical research, and neurotechnology, with thousands of posters, talks, and satellite events. Good for attending if you’re a neuroscientist, early-career researcher, or neurotech company looking to meet the research community. Anthriq will be there — details at the end of this issue.
Link to register: Register here

🎬Case Studies

🎬 Case Study Spotlight: Set-Point Medical- One Minute a Day: How SetPoint Turned the Vagus Nerve Into an Arthritis Therapy.

For decades, rheumatoid arthritis patients who failed biologics had one option: try another drug that suppresses the immune system. SetPoint Medical bet that the nervous system could do the job instead. And that bet is now an FDA-approved implant being used in routine clinical care.

Overview:

SetPoint Medical, founded in 2007, develops the SetPoint System, a neuroimmune modulation device for adults with moderate-to-severe rheumatoid arthritis who haven’t responded to, or can’t tolerate, biologic or targeted synthetic DMARDs. The FDA approved it in July 2025 after the 242-patient RESET-RA study, making it the first non-drug therapy specifically for RA. Commercial rollout began in select US cities, and in September 2026 the system was used for the first time in clinical practice in the Pacific Northwest.

Use Case Highlights:

Small implant, minimal routine: A roughly one-inch implant sits in a silicone pod on the left vagus nerve in the neck, placed during a minimally invasive outpatient procedure.
Automatic dosing: The device stimulates the vagus nerve for one minute, once a day, on a pre-programmed schedule designed to run for up to ten years; no daily patient effort required.
Using the body’s own reflex: Stimulation activates the inflammatory reflex, a neural pathway that dampens immune activity via the spleen, rather than suppressing the immune system with drugs.
A platform beyond RA: SetPoint is exploring the same approach for other autoimmune conditions, including multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s disease.

Key Partnerships:

The RESET-RA trial ran with rheumatology investigators including John Tesser (Arizona Arthritis & Rheumatology Associates) and Mark Richardson (Harvard). On the access side, SetPoint secured FDA Breakthrough Device designation in 2024 and a CMS Transitional Pass-Through Payment in November 2025, smoothing reimbursement as it scales.

Leadership Team

SetPoint Medical is led by President and CEO Murthy Simhambhatla, a seasoned healthcare executive with extensive experience across the medical device, diagnostics, and biopharmaceutical industries. The company’s leadership team includes Chief Medical Officer David Chernoff, Chief Technology Officer Bill Calle, along side experienced executives overseeing clinical affairs, regulatory affairs, research, operations, and commercialization. SetPoint Medical was founded in 2007 and is pioneering bioelectronic medicine through its neuro-immune modulation platform, designed to stimulate the vagus nerve to help treat chronic autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis.

For more information, visit setpointmedical.com

🌟 Catch Us at SfN: Anthriq is headed to Washington!

Anthriq will be at Neuroscience 2026: SfN’s 56th annual meeting.

📅 Date: November 14–18, 2026 |📍Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Washington, D.C.

Find our research team, Dr. Soumya Bhattacharjee, Research head, and Dr. Aditya Asopa, Senior Research Scientist, @Anthriq presenting at Sfn.

Here’s what they’re talking about:

Dr. Aditya Asopa: One platform, many applications: a modality-agnostic architecture unifying EEG, ECG, and EMG across neuroscience, rehabilitation, and BCI.
Dr. Soumya Bhattacharjee: How old is your brain? Predicting cognitive decline from two minutes of EEG.

For all the pulse readers attending the conference, come find us at booth 830!

📍 Join us at either (or both!) of our upcoming events happening in & around D.C & Boston.

Event 1: Neurotech Entrepreneurship for Early Career Researchers
Event 2: Neuroscience Afterhours

Register today to learn more and reserve your spot. We’d love to see you there!

Thanks for reading Neurotech Pulse! Subscribe for free to receive new posts.

Neurotech Pulse is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Neurotech Pulse that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won't be charged unless they enable payments.

Pledge your support