"Zhiran Medical" Secures Another RMB 300 Million in Series A+ Round Financing, Plans to Launch Large-Scale Registered Clinical Trials in 2026 | Exclusive Report by 36Kr
36Kr has learned that the invasive brain-computer interface company "Zhiran Medical" has received 300 million yuan in Series A+ financing. The lead investor is Zhongke Chuangxing, and existing shareholders such as Legend Capital, Beijing Medical and Health Industry Investment Fund, IDG Capital, Shunwei Capital, Lenovo Capital & Incubation Group, Yuansheng Venture Capital, Sequoia Capital China, Meituan Longzhu, BV Baidu Ventures, Xingze Capital, and Jiayin Capital have continued to follow up.
This round of financing will be mainly used to promote large-scale clinical trials, iterate high-throughput flexible brain-computer interface products, and accelerate the clinical application of invasive brain-computer interface technology.
In August last year, Zhiran Medical just received over 300 million yuan in Series A financing. Receiving a large amount of financing again after half a year, with all existing shareholders increasing their investment, shows that investment institutions recognize Zhiran Medical's full-stack capabilities in invasive brain-computer interfaces.
Song Qi, the founder and CEO of Zhiran Medical, told 36Kr that since its establishment, Zhiran has been determined to focus on invasive brain-computer interfaces. On the one hand, the team has profound technical accumulation in the underlying technology of invasive brain-computer interfaces. On the other hand, the ultimate future of brain-computer interfaces will not be limited to brain-controlled external devices and function reconstruction for paralyzed patients. To achieve efficient human-machine information exchange, only invasive brain-computer interfaces can achieve truly high-throughput and high-quality signal reading and writing.
The "flexible electrode", the core component, can be regarded as the key ticket to enter the invasive brain-computer interface track. The human brain is a very soft tissue. After the electrode is implanted into the cerebral cortex, ensuring its long-term stability without displacement and reducing the scarring caused by the immune response, which leads to the attenuation of electroencephalogram signals, have become important research and development directions.
Fang Ying, the founder of Zhiran Medical, has been deeply involved in the research field of flexible high-throughput electrodes and neural recording and regulation for many years and has made several breakthrough achievements. The developed high-throughput "stretchable flexible electrode" can dynamically follow the pulsation and intracranial displacement of the brain after being implanted into the brain, ensuring the long-term stability of the electrode in the brain tissue. Moreover, compared with traditional linear electrodes, this stretchable electrode is also "softer" in the brain, causing less mechanical damage to the brain tissue. Currently, Zhiran Medical has developed a high-throughput wireless invasive brain-computer interface system based on stretchable flexible electrodes.
The dynamic movement effect of the stretchable flexible electrode after being implanted into the brain, provided by the company
In addition to overcoming the difficulties of flexible electrodes, since its establishment, Zhiran Medical has also completed research and development layouts in neural chips, decoding algorithms, and electrode implantation robots. In addition, it has built a nearly 2,000-square-meter clinical-grade micro-nano processing workshop and a GMP-standard assembly workshop, achieving full-chain self-control of clinical-grade products.
In terms of clinical trials, in 2025, Zhiran Medical completed the clinical implantation of a multi-channel invasive brain-computer interface product, initially verifying the safety and effectiveness of the product. Song Qi revealed that in 2026, it plans to launch large-scale registration clinical trials for the multi-channel invasive brain-computer interface product.
Currently, two technical routes have emerged in the field of implantable brain-computer interfaces: semi-invasive brain-computer interfaces and invasive brain-computer interfaces. Invasive brain-computer interfaces directly implant flexible electrodes into the brain tissue, enabling the capture of single-neuron action potentials (Spikes) with high spatio-temporal resolution. They can not only achieve real-time and high-precision decoding of fine movements but also have an order-of-magnitude advantage in the information transmission rate (Bit Rate) of human-machine interaction.
In the country's "15th Five-Year Plan", "brain-computer interface" has been listed as one of the six future industries, and many regions have directly established special funds worth billions of yuan for brain-computer interfaces and brain science. On the payment side, in 2025, the National Healthcare Security Administration issued the "Guidelines for the Establishment of Medical Service Price Items for the Nervous System (Trial)", setting up multiple services related to brain-computer interfaces as independent chargeable items. These measures reflect the determination of multiple parties to support the development of the brain-computer interface industry, and companies with invasive brain-computer interface platform capabilities are also expected to accelerate the implementation of applications.