NeuroAI startup Hemispheric has emerged from stealth with $52 million in early-stage funding to commercialize its brain decoding AI platform. The company’s foundation model, Descartes, is a six-billion-parameter system trained over six years on more than 250,000 hours of brain activity data.
Descartes works through a lightweight dry EEG headset that patients wear for 15 minutes while interacting with a tablet-based app. The system captures brain wave activity and generates objective diagnostic results clinicians can use to match treatments to a patient’s brain profile.
Co-founded by computational neuroscientist Hagai Lalazar and Gidi Littwin, a co-inventor of Apple’s FaceID, Hemispheric has broad financial backing from OneMind/Awareness Capital, Protocol Labs, L Catterton, Hanaco Ventures, and others. The company says its first applications will target post-traumatic stress disorder, mild traumatic brain injury, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, schizophrenia, and anxiety.
Hemispheric said it has demonstrated its AI platform to the leadership of the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health and is pursuing a broad regulatory strategy for both U.S. and European markets. The company plans to use the new capital to expand partnerships with governments and pharma firms and scale its brain data network.
