In-Depth | Capital "Frenzied Buying" of Old Brain-Computer Interface Stocks! Inquiry prices rise steadily, with frequent premiums appearing

All roads of capital are grabbing brain-computer interface projects like crazy.

“Not long ago, I proactively reached out to about 10 funds to seek transfer of old shares in Qiangnao Technology, all of which are top-tier institutions, and I also politely declined many of them.” Liu Dan, one of the early investors in Qiangnao Technology and a well-known investor in the life sciences sector, said in an interview with a reporter from Securities Times, “And the price inquiry kept going up the whole way, even with some intentions priced higher than the price for the new capital increase.”

In the primary market, old-share transfers are usually offered at a discount compared with newly issued shares. The abnormal trading situation of old shares in brain-computer interface companies is precisely a reflection of unprecedented investor heat in this sector’s financing and investment: industrial capital and internet tech giants are entering one after another. However, the reporter learned in the interviews that while capital is fiercely competing for brain-computer interface projects, different investors also have their own preferences for different technical routes.

“Brain-computer interface companies can basically raise funds quickly”

Brain-computer interfaces have been included in this year’s Government Work Report as a future industry, and on top of that, technical breakthroughs such as the approval for the world’s first invasive brain-computer interface as a Class III medical device for上市 have arrived, so the domestic brain-computer interface primary market has entered its “DeepSeek moment.”

On March 13, a startup star in the brain-computer interface field—Jieti Medical—announced the completion of a strategic financing of 500 million RMB; over the past year, the company’s cumulative financing exceeded 1.1 billion RMB. On March 12, Geshu Technology announced the completion of a 150 million RMB angel round financing, setting a new record for the highest angel round financing in China’s brain-computer interface sector. In January, Qiangnao Technology completed another round of financing of about 2 billion RMB, creating a record for a single transaction in the domestic non-invasive brain-computer interface sector.

According to IT Juzi data, as of March 19, there had been 17 investment and financing events in China’s brain-computer interface sector this year, with a total amount of 3.803 billion RMB, far exceeding the financing scale of 1.455 billion RMB for the entire year of 2025.

Liu Dan said that under the current level of hype, startups whose founding teams have at least some foundation in the brain-computer interface industry are basically all being courted, enabling them to obtain rapid financing. More specifically, leading companies in subdivisions have even become targets for mainstream funds to “fill gaps,” with some top funds entering the sector through methods such as old-share transfers.

Tao Tong Investment is one of the lead investors in Jieti Technology’s angel round. Its partner Lin Zhencheng told the reporter that the financing in that round progressed quickly and received oversubscription. At present, multiple other institutions are still lining up to invest in subsequent rounds. “Brain-computer interfaces have become a focus of investment and financing in the medical sector. We started researching and planning this sector two years ago, and we’ve already invested in four or five projects. There are also two or three more projects to invest in later,” he said.

In this wave of investment and financing hype in the brain-computer interface primary market, the money flowing in first still goes to top-tier companies. Large financings are mostly concentrated in enterprises with high technical barriers and fast clinical advancement. Mao Shuo, executive director of Qiming Venture Capital, said in an interview with reporters that institutions generally favor four types of targets: enterprises with solid core technologies, especially where core advantages in implantable and flexible brain-computer interface technologies are clearly evident; founding teams that combine top academic backgrounds with industrialization capabilities; clinical progress leading, able to advance type inspection tests and clinical trials, with a clear approval and commercialization path; and enterprises with clear application scenarios in areas such as motor decoding and treatment of neurological diseases.

This is also why Qiming Venture Capital keeps investing in Jieti Medical. “The founding team of Jieti Medical has extremely strong professionalism and growth potential. It has achieved the development of the first domestically micro-miniaturized implantable, flexible brain-computer interface system, and completed a series of rigorous preclinical validations. At the same time, it is actively pushing for the formation of industry standards and an approval pathway,” Mao Shuo said. “On Jieti Medical, we see a clear future vision. It has already completed the clinical implantation of the first case of domestic motor decoding. Meanwhile, in fields such as language decoding, visual reconstruction, and fine control of neurological diseases, it has also established clear technical routes.”

Companies in brain-computer interface components and materials have also become a sub-sector that capital is laying out. Yang Bo, managing director of Muchimuki (Waterwood) Wutong Venture Capital, told reporters that companies with relatively high technical barriers—such as flexible electrodes for invasive brain-computer interfaces, signal processing systems, chips, and implant devices—are favored by funding.

Industrial capital and internet tech giants enter the stage one after another

In this round of financing hype in the brain-computer interface sector, the set of participants has become even more diverse. Yang Bo observed that in the past, the brain-computer interface industry mainly involved frontier small sub-sectors that were followed by a few medical device funds and hard-tech funds. Now it has entered the attention of more comprehensive funds, industrial capital, local state-owned capital, and internet tech giants.

In the lineup for Qiangnao Technology’s 2 billion RMB financing, there are investment institutions such as IDG Capital and Huaden International, as well as industrial giants such as Lens Technology and Lingyi Zhizao. There are also strategic investors such as Runze Technology, Huazhu Group, and New Oriental Group. In the investors of Geshu Technology, there is also support from industrial capital such as Fourier Intelligence. In Jieti Medical’s 500 million RMB financing, Alibaba led the round, and Tencent followed again; the company is also the first target that Alibaba and Tencent have planned in the brain-computer interface field.

In Lin Zhencheng’s view, as industrial capital and internet tech giants begin to lay out the brain-computer interface sector, the industry will see an influx of more long-cycle capital and resources from the industrial chain, which will further promote the development of foundational research at the bottom layer of the brain-computer interface industry, product development, continuous iteration, and application-scenario deployment.

When industrial capital and internet tech giants enter the sector, the bigger focus is business integration and synergy. Multiple interviewees said that the development direction of brain-computer interfaces cannot be limited to applications in the clinical field. In the future, the imagination space for human-computer interaction applications in non-medical areas—such as entertainment, education, health, and industrial applications—will be even larger.

Mao Shuo said that brain-computer interfaces are not only a cutting-edge medical technology, but also an important direction where life sciences and information technology deeply converge. Taking Jieti Medical as an example, he analyzed that internet tech giants have deep accumulation in multimodal large models, computational power support, intelligent hardware, and ecosystem planning. They can combine and coordinate with Jieti Medical’s advantages in core brain-computer interface hardware technologies and clinical transformation to jointly build a new generation of brain-computer interface systems and a more advanced application ecosystem. “This is both strong support for medical innovation, and a forward-looking plan for the core capabilities of next-generation human-computer interaction.”

“Approval for the world’s first invasive brain-computer interface as a Class III medical device for commercialization, and the entry of internet tech giants into brain-computer interfaces, can be seen as a milestone—turning point for the industry to gradually move toward commercialization,” Lin Zhencheng said.

Differences in technical routes become apparent; institutions have their own focuses

Although all types of institutions generally have a positive view of the brain-computer interface sector, they each have different focuses on different technical routes and sub-sectors.

Mao Shuo said that Qiming Venture Capital will focus on companies with solid core technology barriers and clear clinical implementation value. It will pay particular attention to core areas such as implantable brain-computer interfaces, neural modulation, and signal decoding. It will prioritize enterprises that have top interdisciplinary teams, leading clinical progress, and clear technology roadmaps and commercialization paths—especially founding teams that can achieve a transformation from scientist to entrepreneur, combining academic strength with industrialization capability. At the same time, it will also pay attention to high-quality targets across the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to improve its investment layout.

Compared with the rest, Liu Dan is more optimistic about the future development and applications of semi-invasive technical routes. “Semi-invasive is like the midfield position on a football field. Application scenarios can be cut into medical scenarios, and it can also cut into non-medical scenarios. It has both attack and defense, so it’s relatively flexible.”

Yang Bo has also been paying attention to projects in the brain-computer interface sector recently. He told the reporter that they care about investment opportunities in top-star projects, but they are also looking at early-stage technology-driven enterprises with high growth potential—for example, frontier technology projects related to electrodes for brain-computer interfaces, signal processing systems, algorithm development, and the integration of brain-computer interfaces with embodied intelligence.

In his view, for non-invasive brain-computer interface projects, there are medical devices under serious clinical medical systems, as well as non-invasive brain-computer interface products in scenarios such as psychological emotional health, education, and 3C applications. But the investment-attracting scale of such companies still cannot compare with that of top implantable brain-computer interface companies.

“The future development direction of brain-computer interfaces cannot be limited only to applications in the clinical field. We expect the policy support system to further extend toward basic scientific research, breakthroughs in key core technologies, and multi-scenario integrated applications,” Yang Bo told reporters in an interview. “Especially in directions such as the integration of AI and brain-computer interfaces, the coordination of brain-computer interfaces and embodied intelligence, and verification of new human-computer interaction scenarios, we hope to see more systematic top-level design, special support, and supporting industrial policy packages.”

While closely focusing on continuous breakthroughs in invasive brain-computer interface technology, Lin Zhencheng is also strongly optimistic about the vast application space and potential of non-invasive brain-computer interface technology. He has already laid out medical projects in areas such as depression, Parkinson’s disease, pain, epilepsy, and Alzheimer’s disease. These are distributed across different application scenarios both in hospitals and at home. At the same time, he also sees huge business potential for brain-computer interfaces in the non-medical field. Some research teams are already exploring commercial deployment—for example, brain-controlled drones, brain-controlled cars, brain-controlled games, and so on. “Brain-computer interfaces belong to a long, steep, and snowy course. We will intensively plan for this sector.”

Proofread by: Su Huanwen