BlueRun Ventures Leads Oversubscribed $10M+ Angel Round for Naosi Technology, Focusing on Invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces and Neural Foundation Models | BlueRun Family

Recently, brain-computer interface (BCI) startup Brainsmart Technology (hereinafter referred to as "Brainsmart" or "the company") announced the completion of a Series Angel funding round exceeding ten million USD, led by Konica Capital and BlueRun Ventures in successive tranches, with follow-on investment from Fosun Health Capital. The proceeds will primarily fund product engineering, neural foundation model development, and GMP manufacturing facility construction, accelerating solutions to the challenge of stable BCI operation in real-world scenarios.

From BlueRun's perspective, AI is becoming a critical force driving brain-computer interfaces from laboratory research into real clinical and everyday-life applications. We have long tracked AI-driven frontier life science opportunities and remain bullish on the platform capabilities formed by combining high-quality neural signal acquisition, advanced electrode engineering, and AI decoding models. Brainsmart builds upon the research and commercialization foundation of The University of Hong Kong and InnoHK-ABIC, combined with Shenzhen and the Greater Bay Area's strengths in engineering, clinical translation, and industrial deployment — forming a distinctive closed loop with both original technical depth and industrialization speed. With high-density flexible electrodes, intracortical microneedle electrodes, and neural foundation models at its core, the company is tackling key challenges including cross-subject, cross-task, and long-term stable usage — highly aligned with BlueRun's vision of next-generation BCIs as "universal, low-barrier, and multi-scenario." We look forward to Brainsmart enabling language decoding and thought-control applications, making BCI a new-generation interface connecting human intention with intelligent systems.

2026 is widely regarded as "Year One" for the global BCI industry's development, with the inflection point from academic research to accelerated application already arriving. BCI has been included among the six future industries prioritized for development in China's 15th Five-Year Plan and written into the government work report, forming a three-dimensional resonance of "technology + policy + capital." In this historical window, teams combining top-tier academic DNA with efficient industrialization capabilities will be the first to break away from the pack.

Brainsmart was founded by Professor Guanliang Chen of The University of Hong Kong, building upon the world-class research platform of the Hong Kong Innovation and Technology Commission's InnoHK-ABIC. Professor Chen also serves as Executive Director of the InnoHK-Advanced Biomedical Instrumentation Center (ABIC) and Director of The University of Hong Kong's Central Fabrication Laboratory, with distinguished achievements in academic research, scientific management, and technology translation.

The Advanced Biomedical Instrumentation Center (ABIC), jointly established by The University of Hong Kong and Harvard University, is one of the core translation institutions on Hong Kong's InnoHK platform, with deep accumulated strength in advanced life science research, technology management, and成果转化. This academic background brings Brainsmart critical core resources: world-class BCI engineering research capabilities, dual domestic and international intellectual property networks, and extensive experience from top-tier laboratories to clinical translation.

Brainsmart is driven by a diverse, multi-disciplinary team with full-stack industrial vision, bringing together serial entrepreneurs, top institutional investors, medical device listed company executives, and frontline clinical experts. The team has abandoned pure laboratory thinking, instead adhering to rigorous industrial standards throughout operations, building a complete chain from "frontier academic exploration" to "medical-grade productization" to "scaled commercialization." This deep industrial foundation ensures that invasive BCI technology can cross from laboratory to real world through a more efficient path.

Currently, BCI technology faces a common bottleneck globally — how to collect the richest possible high-resolution neural signals with minimal trauma. Around this problem, Brainsmart is building a full-stack electrode R&D system covering both the brain's surface and deep cortical interiors.

High-density flexible ECoG thin-film electrodes are among Brainsmart's first-generation core products. Placed epidurally, these electrodes reduce the invasiveness of implantation surgery, lowering risks of immune response and tissue damage for more stable long-term signal acquisition. Meanwhile, they achieve higher-density neural signal collection per unit area, effectively compensating for traditional ECoG electrodes' spatial resolution limitations and further improving the precision and reliability of neural intention decoding.

At the same time, Brainsmart is advancing development of 3D intracortical microneedle electrode arrays in parallel. Neurons in the cerebral cortex transmit and compute information through temporally discrete action potential (spike) signals. To understand the brain's core working mechanisms and achieve higher-bandwidth brain-computer interaction, directly acquiring and parsing such signals is the critical path. Brainsmart has already accumulated R&D capabilities in novel flexible materials, advanced electrode structures, and 3D contact arrangements, which can be used synergistically with surface-covering high-density ECoG electrodes in the future to form a "planar + vertical" combined three-dimensional neural signal acquisition system.

Beyond hardware, precise decoding of neural signals is the soul that enables BCI systems to truly function. BCI neural signal decoding has long faced three severe challenges:

• Signals inevitably drift and change over time;
• Each user's brain structure and characteristics exhibit individual differences;
• Brain signal characteristics vary significantly across different tasks and scenarios.

Against the backdrop of rapid AI development, neural foundation models (Neural Foundation Model) built on architectures and large-scale pre-training paradigms similar to large language models (LLMs) are poised to become a key technical path for advancing BCI system capabilities. Compared to traditional user-specific training-dependent decoding approaches, neural foundation models can learn general neural representations across individuals, tasks, and time through large-scale neural data, reducing system calibration and training costs and pushing BCI toward a more "plug-and-play" application form.

Brainsmart's AI algorithm team comprises neural decoding scientists with backgrounds from Northwestern University, Stanford University, University of Michigan, and Huawei, dedicated to building world-leading neural foundation models and exploring their deployment and application in long-term, multi-task, cross-individual scenarios.

Based on the dual advantages of novel electrode devices and advanced neural decoding algorithms, Brainsmart's first-generation products will deeply integrate BCI hardware systems with neural foundation models, focusing on two core application scenarios: first, "Thought-to-Speech" — helping patients who have lost speech abilities due to stroke, ALS, and other conditions regain the ability to speak and communicate; and second, "Thought-Control" — helping patients with full or partial body paralysis drive external devices directly through brain signals, restoring independence in daily life and professional capabilities.

Brainsmart has constructed an R&D system based on "Shenzhen-Hong Kong collaboration", integrating top-tier academic resources, research capabilities, and high-end manufacturing industrial cluster advantages:

• Hong Kong: Focuses on core electrode device R&D, BCI neural mechanism analysis, and advanced neural decoding algorithm research, leveraging ABIC's world-class technical accumulation and experimental platform advantages in micro-nano fabrication to build core BCI technical capabilities;
• Shenzhen: Handles product engineering and industrial deployment, covering manufacturing processes, quality control, system integration, as well as animal experiments and clinical trials.

The two teams have clear division of labor and complementary resources, together forming a complete value chain from basic research to clinical translation, substantially compressing the cycle from innovation to commercialization. Since its formal establishment in 2025, in just one year, Brainsmart has completed a "leapfrog development" from core technology verification, product prototype design, formal inspection, to completing multiple clinical studies, laying a solid foundation for subsequent large-scale clinical trials.

Company founder/CEO Hai Xiao stated: "Technology has always been human-centered, and brain-computer interfaces should be no exception. The completion of this funding round represents not only our investors' recognition of Brainsmart's deep commitment to BCI, but also an engine accelerating our drive to move technology from 'laboratory myth' to 'everyday reality.' We are fully building a universalized foundation for plug-and-play, multi-task dynamic switching — this is not only a technological breakthrough representing China's height, but also a mission to cross mountains and seas, serving every life around the world that yearns to regain freedom."

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