San Diego's NeuroVigil, a developer of non-invasive wireless brain recording technology, has closed its first round of financing. In a statement, the company says the round was led by "an anonymous American industrialist and technology visionary." And the funding may have broken the record for the largest first round of financing valuation, beating out the combined seed valuations of Google and Facebook, Medgadget reports.
Back in 2009, NeuroVigil created the iBrain device and introduced it to the clinical trials space for pharma companies and research institutions to use for collecting brainwave activity from patients at home instead of in the hospital. NeuroVigil, which owns the devices and the data, is searching for biomarkers of major neuropathologies as well as potential signatures of pre-market drugs on the brain, according to the company's release.
"Our vision is that one day people will have access to their brain as routinely and as easily as they currently have to their blood pressure," says company founder and CEO Philip Low in a statement. "We are contributing to that effort by building an innovative technology platform at the confluence of artificial intelligence and wireless engineering, and putting it out in the world. We are delighted to receive the backing of some of the world's foremost investors and technology pioneers as we push forward on this challenging, significant and audacious journey."
As Xconomy's Bruce Bigelow points out, NeuroVigil has an unusually high profile for an early-stage startup, largely because of Low, who published a one-page doctoral thesis as a neuroscience graduate student at The Salk Institute.
- see the NeuroVigil release
- check out the Xconomy story
- read the Medgadget report