Hemispheric

NeuroAI · Healthtech · AI

Funding

Face ID co-inventor's Hemispheric raises $52M for brain-reading AI

The model treats EEG signals like language, aiming to turn a 15-minute headset scan into an objective brain health readout.

• Hemispheric emerged from over six years in stealth with $52M raised across pre-Seed, Seed and a Series A round, backed by Hanaco Ventures, Arkin Capital, OurCrowd, Protocol Labs and L Catterton.
• The Tel Aviv startup was co-founded by computational neuroscientist Hagai Lalazar and Gidi Littwin, a co-founder of RealFace and co-inventor of Apple's Face ID technology.
• Its core product, Descartes, is a six-billion-parameter NeuroAI foundation model trained on over 250,000 hours of EEG and behavioral data from more than 100,000 participants.
• Patients wear a lightweight dry-electrode EEG headset for about 15 minutes while completing tasks on a tablet or phone, requiring no surgery, aiming to spot conditions like PTSD, depression, schizophrenia and Alzheimer's.
• The company cites neuropsychiatric disorders affecting roughly one in three people globally and costing more than an estimated $5.3 trillion annually.
• Funds will go toward expanding Descartes deployments with government, healthcare and pharma partners, growing its brain data network, pursuing regulatory pathways and scaling its U.S. team.
• No published accuracy data against existing diagnostic standards or disclosed regulatory pathway has been shared, and consumer-grade dry EEG is known to be noisy, leaving generalization unproven.
• Psychiatric and neurological diagnosis today still relies heavily on subjective interviews and questionnaires, so a repeatable objective brain score could reshape clinical trials, drug development and mental-health insurance coverage.