{"slug": "while-neuralink-drills-into-skulls-chinas-brainco-is-betting-brain-tech-will-be", "title": "While Neuralink drills into skulls, China’s BrainCo is betting brain tech will be something you wear", "summary": "China's BrainCo, a leading neurotech firm, is developing non-invasive brain-computer interfaces like headbands and caps that read brain signals through the scalp, contrasting with Neuralink's surgical implants. The company has raised $280 million and filed for a Hong Kong IPO, but faces privacy concerns after a 2019 trial of its Focus headbands in a Chinese school sparked backlash.", "body_md": "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](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/11/chinas-brainco-bets-on-wearable-brain-tech.html).\n\nBrainCo, 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.\n\nThe 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.\n\n### What it actually makes\n\nThe 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.\n\nFrom there the product line runs towards consumers. Its wearables include a sleep aid that uses low-intensity electrical pulses aimed at neurochemicals associated with stress relief.\n\nThat range is the strategy in miniature. Prove the technology in medicine, where the benefit is undeniable, then carry the sensors into everyday products.\n\n### Two philosophies, two funding models\n\nThe contrast with Neuralink is stark. Elon Musk’s company implants electrodes directly into brain tissue, a far more powerful signal at a far higher risk.\n\nImplants are also getting real, with [Paradromics putting a brain chip in its first patient](https://thenextweb.com/news/paradromics-first-clinical-brain-chip-implant-speech) and [Science Corp preparing its own human placement](https://thenextweb.com/news/science-corp-biohybrid-brain-sensor-first-human-hodak-yale). The invasive field is no longer a one-horse race.\n\nChina is running both tracks, having already [approved the world’s first commercial brain implant](https://thenextweb.com/news/brain-implants-bci-china-neuralink-commercial-race). Non-invasive devices still account for roughly 82% of its domestic BCI market.\n\nThe money looks different too. American neurotech is largely bankrolled by billionaires, while China’s has seven ministries behind it, with a national BCI plan targeting key breakthroughs by 2027.\n\nBrainCo has raised accordingly. It pulled in around 2 billion yuan, roughly $280m, co-led by IDG Capital, and has filed confidentially for a Hong Kong listing.\n\n### The part that should give you pause\n\nWearables lower the medical stakes and raise a different set. You cannot casually deploy a brain implant across a classroom, but you can absolutely deploy a headband.\n\nBrainCo knows this better than most. In 2019 its Focus headbands, worn by pupils at a primary school in Zhejiang, were shown scoring children’s attention for teachers, and the backlash was ferocious.\n\nThe local education bureau halted the trial. BrainCo said the devices were used in school trials to improve learning efficiency and had not been sold to any public school.\n\nThe episode set out the real question early. Neural data is uniquely intimate, and the technology that is easiest to wear is also the easiest to point at people who did not choose it.\n\nThese worries are not new to the field, as the debate over [what is exciting and what is alarming about brain-computer interfaces](https://thenextweb.com/news/why-we-should-be-excited-and-worried-about-neuralinks-brain-computer-interface-syndication) has run for years. What is new is the prospect of the technology arriving without a surgeon as gatekeeper.\n\n### The boundary nobody has drawn\n\nSome in the field want a hard line. Neuralink rival Inbrain has said it will [never take brain implants beyond healthcare](https://thenextweb.com/news/neuralink-rival-inbrain-will-never-take-brain-implants-healthcare), ruling out consumer uses entirely.\n\nA wearable company cannot make that promise, because the consumer market is the whole point. That is the trade BrainCo has made, and it is a reasonable one for a business.\n\nWhether it is a reasonable one for everybody else depends on rules that mostly do not exist yet. The surgery gets the headlines, but the headband is the thing likely to end up on millions of heads.\n\n## Get the TNW newsletter\n\nGet the most important tech news in your inbox each week.", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/while-neuralink-drills-into-skulls-chinas-brainco-is-betting-brain-tech-will-be", "canonical_source": "https://thenextweb.com/news/brainco-wearable-brain-tech-china-neuralink", "published_at": "2026-07-12 14:41:55+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-12 15:11:19.999449+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-ethics", "ai-products", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["BrainCo", "Neuralink", "Elon Musk", "IDG Capital", "Harvard Innovation Labs", "Paradromics", "Science Corp", "Inbrain"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/while-neuralink-drills-into-skulls-chinas-brainco-is-betting-brain-tech-will-be", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/while-neuralink-drills-into-skulls-chinas-brainco-is-betting-brain-tech-will-be.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/while-neuralink-drills-into-skulls-chinas-brainco-is-betting-brain-tech-will-be.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/while-neuralink-drills-into-skulls-chinas-brainco-is-betting-brain-tech-will-be.jsonld"}}