Hard Krypton Exclusive | Tsinghua-affiliated BCI Company Secures Tens of Millions in Seed Funding, Pioneering Semi- and Non-Invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces with Ultrasound Technology
Hard Krypton has learned that Sisen Technology, an ultrasonic brain-computer interface company, recently completed a seed round of financing worth tens of millions of yuan, jointly invested by Inno Angel Fund and Tsinghua Alumni Seed Fund. The funds will be mainly used for team building, prototype building, and pre-clinical research.
Sisen Technology was established in December 2025. It is an AI-driven brain science technology company that currently focuses on neural regulation and auxiliary drug delivery through non- and semi-invasive ultrasonic brain-computer interfaces.
Its founder, Yan Yimo, is the recipient of the Entrepreneurship Pioneer Award from ETH Zurich. He holds a doctorate and postdoctoral degree from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at ETH and a master's degree from the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Tsinghua University. He has won numerous awards in Swiss and domestic entrepreneurship competitions. CTO Gao Quan is a doctor from ETH and has long been engaged in cross-disciplinary research between robotics and medical engineering. CSO Chief Scientist Li Yuxiao is a doctor from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Tsinghua University, a cooperative AI security researcher at MIT, and a participant in Huawei's Genius Youth Program (in the field of large models). The core members of the team all come from prestigious universities such as Tsinghua University and ETH.
The brain-computer interface (BCI), as a focus of cutting-edge technology, is booming. Overseas, companies like Merge Labs co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Nudge, joined by former Neuralink employees, have successively received hundreds of millions of dollars in financing. The domestic ultrasonic brain-computer interface industry has also emerged as a result.
Compared with traditional "invasive electrode BCIs" like Neuralink, which mainly focus on motor function replacement and reconstruction, language decoding, and face high risks of craniotomy and rejection reactions, the "ultrasonic BCI," which is mainly non-invasive and semi-invasive, shows a broader market space and industrial imagination. Due to the limited upper limit of the patient base, the long-term market ceiling for traditional invasive BCIs is about $20 billion. In contrast, the ultrasonic BCI targets a huge number of patients with central nervous system diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and brain tumors. Its business model has a high degree of diversity, covering device sales, treatment fees, pharmaceutical company profit sharing, and scientific research services, with an annual income potential exceeding $140 billion.
Currently, the fundamental obstacle to curing most brain diseases is the "blood-brain barrier (BBB)." Drugs worth hundreds of billions, such as paclitaxel, bevacizumab, and lecanemab, a special drug for early-onset Alzheimer's disease, cannot effectively cross the blood-brain barrier due to large molecular sizes or structural limitations, resulting in extremely low exposure rates in the brain and limited therapeutic effects.
Sisen Technology is starting with the treatment of glioblastoma, developing a digital cranial ultrasonic device to open the blood-brain barrier and improve the efficiency of drug penetration into the brain tumor area. This is just the first step in Sisen Technology's plan.
Yan Yimo introduced that in the second step, they will focus on "signal reading," further developing the ability to read and decode ultrasonic brain signals, gradually realizing neural interface applications such as motor intention recognition and robotic arm control, and expanding into scenarios of paralysis and neurological disorders. The ultimate goal is to "control accurately." By combining AAV delivery and photosensitive protein engineering, they will modify the response characteristics of neurons in specific brain regions to ultrasound, constructing a more precise and selective ultrasonic neural regulation platform. That is to say, on the basis of digital skulls and ultrasonic neural interfaces, they will further combine synthetic biology to move towards a cell-level, programmable ultrasonic neural regulation platform.
The following is an excerpt from Hard Krypton's interview with Yan Yimo, the founder of Sisen Technology:
Hard Krypton: Many traditional invasive brain-computer interface companies choose motor function recovery as the primary application scenario, while Sisen Technology has chosen to start with "drug delivery for brain tumors and opening the blood-brain barrier." What are the considerations behind this choice?
Yan Yimo: Motor function rehabilitation and decoding represent the long-term potential of brain-computer interfaces. The hope is to decipher human intentions, and this will surely become the trend in the future. However, it is widely recognized that invasive brain-computer interface technology will follow the logic of medical devices for the next 5 - 10 years and will be difficult to enter every household to interpret consciousness.
The cost of invasive electrodes is a craniotomy, which carries risks of infection and rejection. Most patients and their families are very reluctant to accept this. Moreover, from the perspective of the medical market, in the short term, invasive brain-computer interfaces can only target some stroke rehabilitation or motor disability patients, and the economic benefits generated from this are relatively low. The direct treatment fee market is only about 3 - 10 billion yuan per year.
The advantage of ultrasound is that it can provide non-invasive or semi-invasive treatment methods, such as non-invasive through the skull or replacing the skull but outside the dura mater. The blood-brain barrier is the fundamental obstacle to most brain diseases. Opening the blood-brain barrier with ultrasound is not about inventing new drugs but enabling existing chemotherapy drugs and large-molecule monoclonal antibodies worth hundreds of billions to enter the brain, solving the problem of drugs being unable to reach the brain. We have chosen glioblastoma as our starting point and will move on to brain metastases and Alzheimer's disease. As a short-term medical application, the market for ultrasonic brain-computer interfaces is in the hundreds of billions, about ten to a hundred times that of invasive electrodes in terms of commercialization.
Hard Krypton: Sisen positions itself as an "AI-driven brain science company." In the technical path of ultrasonic BCI, what specific role does "AI" play?
Yan Yimo: Current invasive brain-computer interfaces are mainly based on the electrical signals of neuronal discharges, selecting specific brain regions to assist in motor recovery. With 86 billion neurons in the human brain, it is impossible to connect electrical signals to each neuron. Although electrical signals are more precise, they are also more destructive and localized. Ultrasound can be likened to CCTV, capturing field signals. When cells discharge, a tissue becomes active and requires oxygen, which is carried by blood flow. Ultrasound captures this blood flow information. By capturing these blood flow changes, we can infer brain electrical information and obtain a global view.
Based on this multimodality, real-time interpretation by AI is essential. We need to build a corresponding multimodal fusion large model, including cross-modal alignment, to study how to better align acoustic signals with electrical signals and external behaviors, decode them, and perform closed-loop regulation. It is no longer feasible to rely on the traditional mapping library method of observing a signal for each movement. We must rely on the power of AI.
Hard Krypton: What stage has the development of opening the blood-brain barrier reached? What do you think is Sisen's most core technological barrier?
Yan Yimo: In terms of industry progress, there is a U.S. company called Carthera that has reached phase III clinical trials. Opening the blood-brain barrier has been proven to be safe and feasible, improving patient survival rates without any risks or side effects. No domestic company has ventured into this field yet, and we aim to be the first.
The differentiation and technological barriers of our technology mainly fall into two aspects. In the short term, Carthera's medical device uses simple ultrasonic stimulation, while we have developed a real-time detection and closed-loop regulation system: we stimulate the brain, observe the brain's feedback, and then control it in reverse. In the long term, there is currently no multimodal brain data in the industry. We are seizing this opportunity to solve problems in real-time and provide a large amount of brain data to better train our own foundation models.
Hard Krypton: The global ultrasonic brain-computer interface track has been very active recently. What unique differentiating features does Sisen Technology have?
Yan Yimo: Compared with other companies, our team has a highly diverse technical background. Generally, traditional brain-computer interface companies start from medical devices and increase their valuations by expanding their product pipelines. However, companies like Merge Labs and Neuralink have valuations far exceeding those of traditional medical device companies. The underlying logic is their exploration of more imaginative brain-computer interface technologies. The background of our team gives us the opportunity to transform the brain-computer interface from a medical device into a new valuation model.
I have a biomedical background, mainly focusing on medical robots, surgical robots, and hardware construction. Our co-founders with expertise in embodied intelligence and large models are all graduates from top universities. We also have former participants in Huawei's Genius Youth Program working on software algorithms. They have extensive experience in all aspects of algorithms, from computer vision (CV) to natural language processing (NLP) and large language models. The partners in our team were born between 1995 and 2000. Their technical backgrounds are highly diverse, and each team member is highly capable of working independently. This is also why many investors are interested in us.
Investor opinions:
Inno Science and Technology Fund stated: "The ultrasonic brain-computer interface is a globally recognized non-invasive brain-computer technology paradigm. Sisen Technology is the youngest ultrasonic brain-computer team in China. With solid technology and rapid R & D progress, they have completed a prototype and will conduct animal and human trials this year, ranking among the top in the country. Inno is optimistic about the broad application space of the brain-computer interface and the vibrant R & D team led by Dr. Yan. We hope that Sisen's products will be launched soon to benefit humanity!"
Tsinghua Alumni Seed Fund stated: "The Sisen Technology team comes from top academic institutions such as Tsinghua University, ETH, and MIT. It is the only domestic ultrasonic brain-computer interface team with the cross-disciplinary capabilities of AI large models, embodied intelligence, synthetic biology, and biomedicine. This kind of team structure is extremely rare globally."