The most visible race in brain-computer interfaces involves surgery. But one of China’s most valuable neurotech firms is deliberately not competing in it, CNBC reports.
BrainCo, based in Hangzhou, builds devices that read the brain from outside the skull. Headbands and caps pick up electrical signals through the scalp, with no operating theatre involved.
The company is one of Hangzhou’s so-called six little dragons, the cluster of startups that has come to symbolise Chinese tech ambition. It was founded in 2015 and came out of the Harvard Innovation Labs.
What it actually makes
The clinical work is the most concrete. BrainCo’s bionic hands, which have US FDA approval, read an amputee’s neural and muscular signals and turn intended movements into finger motions.
