Price inquiries continue to rise, premium bidding for old shares. Various capital sources are rushing to acquire brain-machine interface projects.

“Recently, I proactively reached out and looked for funds to take over older shares in Qiangnao Technology—there were nearly 10 such funds. They were all top-tier institutions, and I also politely declined many offers.” One of Qiangnao Technology’s early investors and a well-known investment professional in the life sciences sector, Liu Dan, said in an interview with a Securities Times reporter, “In addition, the asking price kept rising all the way, with even indications that were higher than the price of the new capital increase.”

In the primary market, trading older shares is usually done at a discount compared with new shares. The abnormal pricing behavior in the transfer of older shares in brain-computer interface companies is precisely a snapshot of this sector’s unprecedented investment and financing heat: industrial capital and major internet conglomerates have all moved in. However, the reporter learned during the interviews that while everyone is scrambling for brain-computer interface projects, different investors’ technical route preferences vary.

Brain-computer interface companies

Almost all can raise funds quickly

With brain-computer interfaces being included in this year’s Government Work Report as a future industry, along with technical breakthroughs such as the approval and listing of the world’s first invasive brain-computer interface Class III medical device, China’s brain-computer interface primary market has entered a “DeepSeek moment.”

On March 13, Jieti Medical, a brain-computer interface star startup, announced the completion of a 500 million yuan strategic financing round. Over the past year, the company’s total financing amount has exceeded 1.1 billion yuan. On March 12, Gemtas Technology announced the completion of a 150 million yuan 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 yuan, setting a domestic single-transaction record in the non-invasive brain-computer interface field.

IT Juzi data shows that as of March 19, in the year to date, the brain-computer interface sector has seen 17 investment and financing events, with a total amount of 3.803 billion yuan, far exceeding the 1.455 billion yuan financing scale for the full year of 2025.

Liu Dan said that under the current level of hype, early-stage startups that have at least some foundational background in the brain-computer interface industry are basically sought after, enabling them to obtain rapid financing. More specifically, the segmented leading companies become targets for mainstream funds to “check for gaps and fill in blanks,” and “some top funds enter the sector through methods such as taking over older shares.”

Daotong Investment is one of the lead investors in Gemtas Technology’s angel round financing. Its partner, Lin Zhencheng, told the reporter that the financing round was advanced quickly and achieved oversubscription, and there are currently multiple other institutions that are still chasing to invest in subsequent rounds. “Brain-computer interface has become the focus of investment and financing in the medical circle. We started researching and laying out this sector two years ago, and we have already invested in four or five projects. There are still two or three projects we need to put out afterward,” he said.

In this round of the primary-market investment and financing boom for brain-computer interfaces, capital flowing in first is still from top companies. Large rounds of financing are mostly concentrated in companies with high technical barriers and fast clinical progress. Mao Shu, executive director of Qiming Venture Capital, said in an interview with the reporter that institutions generally favor four types of targets: companies with hard-core technologies, especially clear core advantages in implantable and flexible brain-computer interface technologies; founding teams that combine top academic backgrounds with industrialization capabilities; clinical progress leading the way, enabling promoted pattern inspection and clinical trials, with clear approval and commercialization routes; and 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 developed the first micro-miniaturized implantable, flexible brain-computer interface system in China, and completed a series of rigorous preclinical validations. At the same time, it is also actively promoting the formation of industry standards and approval pathways.” Mao Shu said, “We see a clear future vision in Jieti Medical. It has already completed the clinical implantation of the first case of motor decoding in China. It has also formulated clear technical routes in areas such as language decoding, visual reconstruction, and fine control of neurological diseases.”

Companies in brain-computer interface components, materials, and related areas have also become sub-sectors for capital to deploy. Yang Bo, managing director of Muwu Wutong Venture Capital, told the reporter that companies with higher technical barriers—such as flexible electrodes for invasive brain-computer interfaces, signal processing systems, chips, and implantable devices—are favored by capital.

Industrial capital and major internet conglomerates move in one after another

During this financing boom in the brain-computer interface sector, the participants have become even more diversified. Yang Bo observed that earlier, the sector was largely a cutting-edge niche focused on by only a few medical device funds and hard-tech funds. Now it has entered the vision of more diversified funds, industrial capital, local state-owned capital, and major internet conglomerates.

In the lineup for Qiangnao Technology’s 2 billion yuan financing, there are investment institutions such as IDG Capital and Huading International. There are also industrial giants such as Lens Technology and Lingyi Zhizao. In addition, there are strategic investment institutions such as Runze Technology, Huazhu Group, and TAL Education. Among Gemtas Technology’s investors, there is also support from companies such as Fourier Intelligence. For Jieti Medical’s 500 million yuan financing, Alibaba leads the round, and Tencent again participates as a follow-on investor. The company is also the first target that Alibaba and Tencent have laid out in the brain-computer interface field.

In Lin Zhencheng’s view, as industrial capital and major internet conglomerates 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 development in underlying basic research, product development, continuous iteration, and the landing of application scenarios in the brain-computer interface industry.

With industrial capital and major internet conglomerates entering the market, the bigger focus is business integration and synergy. Multiple interviewees believe that the development direction of brain-computer interfaces cannot be limited only 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 much larger.

Mao Shu said that brain-computer interface is not just a cutting-edge medical technology, but also an important direction for the deep integration of life sciences and information technology. Taking Jieti Medical as an example, he analyzed how major internet conglomerates have accumulated deep strengths in multi-modal large models, computing power support, intelligent hardware, and ecosystem layout. They can combine and coordinate their advantages with Jieti Medical’s core brain-computer hardware technologies and clinical transformation, and work together to build a new generation of brain-computer interface systems and a more frontier application ecosystem. “This is both a strong support for medical innovation and a forward-looking layout of the core capabilities for next-generation human-computer interaction.”

“As for the approval and listing of the world’s first invasive brain-computer interface Class III medical device, and the entry of major internet conglomerates into brain-computer interfaces, these can be seen as a marker—the turning point at which the industry gradually moves toward commercialization,” Lin Zhencheng said.

Divergences in technical routes emerge

Institutional deployments each have their own focus

Although various types of institutions generally show optimism about the brain-computer interface sector, they each focus differently on different technical routes and sub-sectors.

Mao Shu said that Qiming Venture Capital will focus on companies with hard-core technology barriers and clear clinical landing value, with priority on core areas such as implantable brain-computer interfaces, neural regulation, and signal decoding. It will prioritize companies that have top cross-disciplinary teams, leading clinical timelines, 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 look for high-quality targets across the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain to improve its investment layout.

Liu Dan is more optimistic about the future development and application of semi-invasive technology routes in the medium term. “Semi-invasive is like being in the midfield of a football field. Application scenarios can be entered into medical settings, or also into non-medical settings. You can advance and you can retreat, with relatively more flexibility.”

Yang Bo has also been paying attention to brain-computer interface projects recently. He told the reporter that he is both looking at investment opportunities in top star projects and watching early-stage technology-driven companies with high growth potential—for example, frontier science and technology projects related to brain-computer interfaces such as electrodes, signal processing systems, algorithm development, and the fusion development of brain-computer interfaces with embodied intelligence.

In his view, for non-invasive brain-computer interface projects, there are medical devices within the framework of serious clinical medicine, as well as non-invasive brain-computer interface products for scenarios such as mental and emotional health, education, and 3C applications. However, the investment-attracting scale of such companies is still not comparable to that of leading invasive brain-computer interface companies.

“Brain-computer interface’s future development direction cannot be limited to clinical applications only. I hope the policy support system will further extend toward basic scientific research, tackling key core technology, and multi-scenario integrated applications.” Yang Bo said in an interview with the reporter, “Especially in directions such as the integration of AI and brain-computer interfaces, the coordination of brain-computer interfaces with embodied intelligence, and validation of new scenarios for human-computer interaction, I hope to see more systematic top-level design, special support, and supporting industrial policies.”

While closely monitoring continuous breakthroughs in invasive brain-computer interface technology, Lin Zhencheng is highly optimistic about the huge application space and potential of non-invasive brain-computer interface technology. He has already deployed 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 for home use. At the same time, he is also optimistic about the enormous commercial potential of brain-computer interfaces in non-medical fields. Some research teams are already exploring commercial landing, such as brain-controlled drones, brain-controlled cars, brain-controlled games, and more. “Brain-computer interfaces belong to a ‘long climb with thick snow’ kind of track. We will strongly布局 that track.”

（Source: Securities Times）