Kernel raises $53 million to ease access to rich neural data and market Neuroscience as a Service (NaaS)

Ker­nel Sound ID is designed to help decode and visu­al­ize what a per­son is hearing

Ker­nel rais­es $53 mil­lion to bring neu­ro­science insights to busi­ness­es (Ven­ture­Beat):

Ker­nel has raised $53 mil­lion to accel­er­ate devel­op­ment of a new gen­er­a­tion of brain tech, help­ing com­pa­nies lever­age insights from the lat­est advances in neuroscience.

Gen­er­al Cat­a­lyst led the round, which marks the first out­side fund­ing the com­pa­ny has accept­ed. Ker­nel had pre­vi­ous­ly been self-fund­ed by founder and CEO Bryan John­son. Khosla Ven­tures, Eldridge, Man­ta Ray Ven­tures, and Tiny Blue Dot also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the round.

“We can quan­ti­fy and mea­sure pret­ty much every­thing in the known uni­verse, from dis­tant stars to our calo­ries and our steps and our genome,” John­son said. “Our mind is one of the only things that we can­not con­sis­tent­ly mea­sure and quan­ti­fy. And humans do remark­able things when we can mea­sure something.”

The main goal is fig­ur­ing out the best use cas­es for this tech­nol­o­gy. John­son believes access to rich neur­al data has appli­ca­tions in fields rang­ing from brain health to edu­ca­tion, AI and machine learn­ing, nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing, and con­sumer behavior.

News in Context:

• Ker­nel launch­es Neu­ro­science as a Ser­vice (NaaS) built on non-inva­sive brain record­ing technology
• New report: Empow­er­ing 8 Bil­lion Minds via Eth­i­cal Devel­op­ment and Adop­tion of Neurotechnologies
• Info­graph­ic on the Dig­i­tal Brain Health Mar­ket 2012–2020
• Five rea­sons the future of brain enhance­ment is dig­i­tal, per­va­sive and (hope­ful­ly) bright
• Ten neu­rotech­nolo­gies about to trans­form brain enhance­ment & health
• 10 high­lights from the 2019 Sharp­Brains Vir­tu­al Summit