Neurotech start-up Ctrl-labs raises $28M to reinvent human-computer interactions

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Ctrl-labs rais­es $28 mil­lion from GV and Alexa Fund for neur­al inter­faces (Ven­ture Beat):

“Ctrl-labs, a New York start­up that’s devel­op­ing a device capa­ble of trans­lat­ing elec­tri­cal mus­cle impuls­es into dig­i­tal sig­nals, today announced that it has raised $28 mil­lion in a fund­ing round led by GV, Google’s ven­ture cap­i­tal arm, with par­tic­i­pa­tion from a swath of oth­er heavy hit­ters includ­ing Amazon’s Alexa Fund, Lux Cap­i­tal, Spark Cap­i­tal, Matrix Part­ners, Brey­er Cap­i­tal, and Fuel Cap­i­tal … Ctrl-kit lever­ages dif­fer­en­tial elec­tromyo­g­ra­phy (EMG) to trans­late men­tal intent into action, specif­i­cal­ly by mea­sur­ing changes in elec­tri­cal poten­tial caused by impuls­es trav­el­ing from the brain to hand mus­cles. Six­teen elec­trodes mon­i­tor the motor neu­ron sig­nals ampli­fied by the mus­cle fibers of motor units, from which they mea­sure sig­nals, and with the help of AI algo­rithms trained using Google’s Ten­sor­Flow dis­tin­guish between the indi­vid­ual puls­es of each nerve.

…investors like Erik Nord­lan­der, gen­er­al part­ner at GV, are con­vinced that Ctrl-labs’ ear­ly momen­tum — in addi­tion to the robust­ness of its devel­op­er tools — will help it gain an ear­ly lead in the brain-machine inter­face race.

“Ctrl-labs’ devel­op­ment of neur­al inter­faces will empow­er devel­op­ers to cre­ate nov­el expe­ri­ences across a wide vari­ety of appli­ca­tions,” he said. “The com­pa­ny has assem­bled a team of top neu­ro­sci­en­tists, engi­neers, and devel­op­ers with deep tech­nol­o­gy back­grounds, cre­at­ing human-com­put­er inter­ac­tions unlike any­thing we have seen before.”

News in Context:

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• 10 neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment and brain health
• The dual chal­lenge ahead of Facebook’s Typ­ing-by-Brain project: 1) devel­op the neu­rotech­nol­o­gy, 2) devel­op the science