Behind the $4 billion boom in brain-computer interfaces: Five investment logics, an unconsolidated track

In the first three months of 2026, the total financing in the brain-computer interface track has exceeded 4 billion yuan, surpassing the whole year of 2025. However, few people notice that although real money is being poured into this cutting-edge field, the investment logics of different institutions are like parallel universes -

Some value clinical value, some bet on the track layout, some act as early catchers from an industrial perspective, and some bet on technological geniuses.

Understanding these differences is more important than simply counting the investment amounts.

01 Clinical-driven: Clinical value is the only yardstick

Qiming Venture Partners, Lilly Asia Ventures, and OrbiMed are the "professional medical school" in this track. Their decision-making frameworks are highly consistent: the technical route must be verifiable, the clinical path must be clear, and the commercialization schedule must have an anchor point.

Qiming Venture Partners' continuous investment stance is the most typical. In February 2025, Jieti Medical completed a Series B financing of 350 million yuan, co-led by Qiming Venture Partners, OrbiMed, and Lilly Asia Ventures, setting a new record for a single financing of implantable brain-computer interfaces in China at that time. In 2026, Jieti Medical received another strategic financing of 500 million yuan, and Qiming Venture Partners continued to participate, jointly completed with seven institutions including Tencent Investment, Alibaba Capital, and Source Code Capital. This strategy of "continuous betting and accompanying through the cycle" stems from its in-depth tracking of clinical data - Jieti Medical has completed more than 50 investigator-initiated clinical trials and established the world's largest single-cell dataset of flexible electrodes in the human body.

The logics of Lilly Asia Ventures and OrbiMed are in the same vein: Brain-computer interfaces have disruptive potential in the field of neurological disease treatment and are highly compatible with existing pipelines. Lu Hongbo, the managing partner of Lilly Asia Ventures, has clearly stated that the fund focuses on "innovative therapies supported by clinical data." As a well-known biopharmaceutical venture capital firm, the configuration of OrbiMed's Asia-Pacific team itself indicates its long-term optimism about this track.

Essential difference: These institutions are not investing in "brain-computer interfaces," but in "the next-generation solutions for neuromodulation." They can accept a longer return cycle, but require each round of financing to be supported by clear clinical milestones.

02 Track layout-driven: Systematic coverage and waiting for the industry to converge

Sequoia China ranks first in the number of institutional participations with six investments, covering multiple projects such as BrainCo and Zhiran Medical. The view of Yang Yunxia, a partner at Sequoia China, is quite representative: "Brain-computer interfaces can be used in many fields such as brain science, clinical medicine, and consumer electronics, especially in the diagnosis and treatment of brain diseases, where they are expected to play a huge role."

It is worth noting that Sequoia's layout shows the characteristics of "early full-track" - from semi-invasive/minimally invasive (BrainCo) to invasive (Zhiran Medical), covering both scientific research tools and clinical devices. This approach is similar to its layout logic in the robotics track: not betting on a single technical route, but systematically covering and waiting for the industry to converge.

IDG Capital has a different style. In 2026, IDG Capital led the Series B+ financing of 2 billion yuan for Qiangnao Technology, setting a record for the largest single financing in the field of brain-computer interfaces in China. IDG's investment logic is closer to the "track leader strategy": finding the most likely target to succeed in the industry and making concentrated heavy bets. Qiangnao Technology's non-invasive route, FDA-certified intelligent bionic hand, and production capacity of 100,000 units are all the basis for IDG's judgment that its "commercialization certainty is higher."

Essential difference: Track layout-driven institutions are investing in "the entire brain-computer interface track." They pay more attention to the industry beta rather than the alpha of a single project. They are willing to make early systematic layouts to diversify risks or make concentrated heavy bets on targets with high certainty.

03 Industry perspective-driven: Independent VCs making frontier bets with industry knowledge

Institutions such as Baidu Ventures, Meituan Longzhu, and Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group are often simply classified as "industrial capital," but this definition is not accurate. Although they are backed by industrial companies, they are essentially independently operated investment institutions - with independent investment committees, independent decision-making processes, and their investment scope is far from limited to the fields synergistic with the parent company's business.

Take Baidu Ventures as an example. With five investments and multiple follow-on investments in Zhiran Medical and BrainCo, the outside world often interprets this as "AI strategic synergy," but Baidu Ventures' investment portfolio is far more than that - from quantum computing to synthetic biology, from commercial space to next-generation robots, its investment logic is closer to "discovering cutting-edge technologies from an industry perspective" rather than "finding supporting facilities for Baidu's ecosystem." Liu Wei, the CEO of Baidu Ventures, has said that he pays attention to "the intersection of AI and brain science." This is indeed Baidu's unique perspective, but it is more of a cognitive advantage than a strategic binding.

The same is true for Meituan Longzhu. As a "consumer unicorn catcher," its continuous three-round investment in Zhiran Medical does not represent "the extension of consumer Internet to medical technology," but an independent VC's judgment on the cutting edge of hard technology - Meituan Longzhu values the "huge application prospects of invasive flexible brain-computer interface technology" and the core technological breakthroughs of the team, which is significantly different from the pure strategic investment logic.

Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group is more inclined to a full hard technology track layout. Wang Guangxi, the managing partner of Lenovo Capital & Incubator Group, pointed out the key: "The invasive electrode technology has great potential, but it needs to solve the problem of biocompatibility, and the industrialization faces challenges such as high cost and high risk." This judgment of technological bottlenecks comes more from the due diligence judgment from a VC perspective rather than the demand for industrial integration.

Essential difference: Industry perspective-driven institutions have twofold advantages - they have both the financial return orientation and full-track vision of an independent VC, and the cognitive resources and scenario verification ability of the industrial parent company. They invest first in "good technologies and good teams," and industrial synergy is a plus rather than a necessary condition. The exit paths are also more similar to those of traditional VCs - IPO or M&A, rather than forced integration into the parent company's ecosystem.

04 Early catcher-driven: Discoverers of technological geniuses

CAS Star, MiraclePlus, and Yuanlai Capital form the early catcher camp.

CAS Star led the Series A+ financing of Zhiran Medical, with the clearest logic: CAS Star is the creator of the "hard technology" concept. Its founding partner, Mi Lei, proposed that "hard technology" refers to core technologies with extremely high technological thresholds based on scientific discoveries and technological inventions. The "stretchable high-throughput flexible electrode" developed by the team of Fang Ying, the founder of Zhiran Medical, was published in Nature Electronics, which is exactly the "hard technology" target in the eyes of CAS Star.

Yuanlai Capital was the exclusive investor in the angel round of Jieti Medical and has continuously invested in four subsequent rounds. Yuanlai Capital focuses on the industrial technology and advanced manufacturing track, and its style of "deeply participating in the entire process of company establishment" makes it the earliest and most long-term companion.

MiraclePlus, an incubator founded by Qi Lu, pays more attention to the combination of "founders + technological geniuses" and mainly focuses on angel rounds in the field of brain-computer interfaces.

Essential difference: Early catcher-driven institutions invest in "people + technology." They bet that the founding team can solve the most core technological bottlenecks in the industry rather than the certainty of the commercialization path.

05 An unignorable variable: The large-scale entry of state-owned capital

A notable feature of brain-computer interface financing in 2026 is the intensive entry of state-owned capital. Government-guided funds and state-owned platforms such as Shanghai State-owned Assets Investment Corporation, Pudong Venture Capital, Beijing Pharmaceutical and Health Industry Investment Fund, Yueke Financial Holdings, Zhuhai High-tech Investment, and Hangzhou Capital have all made investments. Their investment logics are different from those of the aforementioned four types of institutions - they value more the technological self-control, the strengthening and supplementation of the industrial chain, and the cultivation of the regional industrial ecosystem.

The entry of state-owned capital is changing the capital structure and valuation system of this track and also providing more possibilities for the exit paths of institutions.

06 Why are the landscapes in the same track completely different?

An FA (financial advisor) who has participated in multiple brain-computer interface projects told me that the investors in this industry actually live in "four parallel worlds":

● Clinical-driven investors look at clinical data and the progress of registration certificates, and their time unit is "years";

● Track layout-driven investors look at the industry beta and the time point of track convergence, and their time unit is "cycles";

● Industry perspective-driven investors look at the early layout of cutting-edge technologies and cognitive arbitrage, and their time unit is the "technology maturity curve";

● Early catcher-driven investors look at technological breakthroughs and the founders' cognition, and they are willing to pay for "technologies that will mature in 10 years";

● State-owned institutions look at technological self-control, the strengthening and supplementation of the industrial chain, and the cultivation of the regional industrial ecosystem. Their time unit is "the intersection of national strategic needs and local industrial planning" - they need to solve the problem of self-sufficiency in "neck-sticking" technologies, and also lead enterprises to settle through investment to form industrial clusters, ultimately serving the transformation of the regional economy and the improvement of the competitiveness of high-tech industries.

This differentiation essentially reflects the particularity of the brain-computer interface industry - it is both a medical device, an entrance for human-computer interaction, and the ultimate exploration of neuroscience. Different institutions see different endpoints in the same track, so they make completely different choices.

Only by understanding these differences can we truly understand the underlying logic of brain-computer interface investment in China.

This article is from the WeChat official account "IT Juzi" (ID: itjuzi521), author: Judy, published by 36Kr with authorization.