Dialogue with Chen Xingru, President of Emotiv China: The commercialization of non-invasive brain-computer interface in China has only just begun | Understanding KNOW-HOW

"Workplace Bonus" (ID: ZhiChangHongLi)

Written by / Chen Tong      Cover image / Provided by the interviewee

New Boundaries of Brain-Computer Technology · 01

Truth of Commercialization: ToB Clients, Consumer-Grade Products and "Brain Gym" · 02

Teams, Organizations and "Slow Variables" · 03

In 2026, brain-computer interface (BCI) has finally ushered in its "policy dividend year".

The recognition as a "future industry" in the government work report drove the entire track to secure 64 financing deals totaling 7.253 billion RMB in the first half of the year. BrainCo alone took 2 billion RMB, BrainRoam is sprinting for IPO on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board, and Neuralink's valuation has already exceeded 10 billion USD. Even at the World Robot Conference (WRC), brain-controlled humanoid robots became the most crowded exhibition booth: BrainCo released a brain-controlled robot training platform, Fourier Intelligence demonstrated a brain-controlled humanoid robot, and the combined move of "BCI + Embodied Intelligence" made the entire industry boiling with enthusiasm.

Amid all this hustle and bustle, "Emotiv" is a low-key and slightly alternative presence.

According to the company, this Silicon Valley-founded company established in 2011 has world-leading data accumulation in the non-invasive EEG field: it has accumulated more than 100 million minutes of EEG data, over 20,000 papers on Google Scholar cite its devices, it has more than 4,000 research institution clients worldwide, and holds a 67% market share in European and American markets.

In August 2026, three days after the WRC concluded, Chen Xingru, President of Emotiv China, received a call from "Workplace Bonus". Last March, Emotiv just obtained its business license under the name of "Beijing Emotiv" and completed local registration in Haidian District, Beijing. Prior to that, Emotiv operated in China and overseas through a distributor model for ten years. In 2026, the company officially launched a new round of large-scale financing: with a valuation of 2 billion USD, it plans to raise 250 million USD (equivalent to about 1.7 billion RMB at the current exchange rate). This is also the first large-scale global financing in the 15 years since the company's establishment.

For Emotiv, China is a brand new high-potential market. Chen Xingru's main work in recent months is to build industry ecosystems, establish cooperative relationships, customize enterprise-level neurotech solutions for BCI, promote large-scale BCI integration across various industries, and carry out public outreach for consumer popularization.

Chen Xingru's resume is also quite special in the extremely hardcore BCI track. She is a graduate of Columbia University, holds a bachelor's degree in Economics/Anthropology from the University of Rochester, and has 15 years of PE/VC experience on Wall Street. She is deeply familiar with the Sino-US PE/VC technology venture capital circles. With a solid private equity background and years of in-depth research in the consciousness/artificial intelligence field, she leads this world's most influential non-invasive BCI company into China, fully driving and supporting the development layout of China's BCI industry, and contributing to the global BCI revolution.

In conversation, Chen Xingru switches naturally between Chinese and English, and speaks with full enthusiasm when talking about "flow state" and "brain gym".

Her understanding of BCI technology also naturally carries the "narrative sense" of an investor. In addition to revealing that she is in contact with some well-known Silicon Valley giants for data cooperation, the four generations of human-computer interaction evolution (keyboard - touch screen - voice control - brain control) she describes is as smooth as a business plan, showing the structured thinking unique to investors.

But we are also clearly aware that the real situation of the non-invasive BCI track in China is that policies, capital and concepts are all hot, but commercial implementation is still a long way to go. Emotiv has the world's deepest data accumulation, with 300,000 hours of pre-training time (42 times that of LaBraM's 7,000 hours). In China's competitive landscape, its current marketization stage is not "whether it has the technology", but "how to convert technology into products, how products find scenarios, and how scenarios generate revenue".

For young people who are considering entering the BCI track, Chen Xingru offers a possibility: the China entry of a global platform has just opened its door, and is ready to welcome talented and skilled young people from all related industries.

The following is the transcript of our conversation with Chen Xingru, edited by the "Workplace Bonus" editorial team.

New Boundaries of Brain-Computer Technology

Domestic BCI financing was very hot in the first half of 2026, and you are currently raising 250 million USD. Why now? How do you plan to use this funding?

 Chen Xingru : Yes, this round is our first large-scale financing. The 2 billion USD valuation is benchmarked against global peer AI, BCI and big data companies. As one of the world's earliest enterprises engaged in non-invasive BCI, Emotiv has accumulated a large number of commercial and civilian scenarios, and cooperates with the world's top 4,000 research institutions, schools, medical institutions and Fortune 500 companies. Over the past 10 years, we have been one of the few enterprises in the global industry that have achieved commercial revenue.

Many domestic peer enterprises are still in a relatively early stage, having just obtained financing and basic R&D funds, with no revenue generated and no large-scale product sales. We have been self-sufficient for the past 10 years and have positive cash flow. Most domestic companies in this industry may have been in the "spending money" stage for many years, which makes us very different in this regard.

The new financing will be mainly used for global market expansion (especially the Chinese market), building the world's largest and most powerful Large Brain Model (LBM), team building, new product R&D, larger-scale and cross-industry marketization, entering the consumer end, and popularizing BCI products' applications for both toC and toB ends.

One signal released at this year's WRC is that robots may become one of the largest implementation scenarios for BCI technology. Do you currently have a brain-controlled robot platform? Do you have plans to carry out formal cooperation with Chinese robotics companies?

 Chen Xingru : As early as 10 years ago, Emotiv, as one of the world's earliest BCI technology enterprises, demonstrated Mind Control and brain control technologies (such as brain-controlled drones and robots) at TEDxAI and major international exhibitions. After that, different scenarios around the world - hospitals, rehabilitation centers, disabled children, and ALS patients - all directly accessed our brain control platform and technologies.

At the 2024 Paris Paralympics, the Emotiv EPOC X EEG headset became the core component of the brain-computer interface (BCI) system in the 2024 Paris Paralympics torch relay. Nathalie Labrégère was born with cerebral motor impairment, and she used her brain to control an exoskeleton arm during the Paralympic torch relay, becoming the focus of attention. Using Emotiv's EPOC X EEG headset paired with Multimodal Cognitive AI Agents developed by Inclusive Brains, Nathalie operated the Orthopus exoskeleton arm installed on her Permobil smart wheelchair. Her facial expressions were tracked through a camera, bringing a new dimension to assistive technology.

● During the 2024 Paris Paralympics torch relay, torchbearer Nathalie used the Emotiv EPOC X EEG headset paired with AI Agents from Inclusive Brains to operate the exoskeleton arm installed on her smart wheelchair.

Our cooperation with Chinese robotics companies will start this year. At present, we have initially established connections with the Beijing municipal government, embodied intelligence companies under the Haidian District administration, as well as some robotics companies based in Shenzhen, and we will gradually launch corresponding cooperation in this field.

The industry is undergoing a paradigm shift - from "the brain controls every joint" to "intention layer" recognition. Robots are becoming smarter on their own, and BCI only needs to be responsible for "telling the robot to pass the water cup to me", leaving the rest to the robot. Does this new paradigm of recognizing human intention layer benefit or disadvantage non-invasive EEG?

 Chen Xingru : Overall, it is definitely a benefit. A very important part of BCI technology is called Active BCI. In the past 10 years, BCI mostly stayed in Passive BCI - passively collecting brainwaves for commercial analysis and auxiliary medical diagnosis.

With the rapid development of AI in the past few years, we can now combine with robots and brain control devices, whether for playing games, controlling vehicles, managing audio, light and electric effects, or even performing fine movements. The most important thing behind this is algorithms and large models.

The pre-training time of data accumulated by Emotiv in the past 10 years is 300,000 hours, and we have accumulated more than 100 million minutes of EEG data, covering multiple races, cultures, regions and age distributions, especially EEG data collection from healthy human brains. No one can match this amount for now, and our equipment has high data collection accuracy, so enterprises in commercial, scientific research, medical, and even toC consumer fields are more willing to use our equipment for collection and our data analysis software platform.

What value do these data have for large model companies?

 Chen Xingru : Now in the human world, the four types of data accumulated over thousands of years used for large model pre-training - text, images, videos and sounds - are almost exhausted. Many scientists and computer scientists believe that the LLM path has reached its peak. Scientists represented by Li Feifei have begun to explore world models and develop Physical AI.

The two most lacking dimensions in this path are brain data and tactile data. Therefore, large model companies such as OpenAI and Gemini have recently approached us to discuss cooperation related to human brain data - they also realize the importance of human brain data for training world models.

Emotiv ranks first in the world in terms of human brain data, healthy human brain data and data diversity. Our data covers more than 220 countries, different races and ages, and the vast majority are data samples of healthy human brains, not just collected through conventional hospital cooperation.

But academic citations usually have different standards from the industrial world. The accuracy controversy of non-invasive EEG has always existed - high noise and low spatial resolution. Have you encountered related obstacles when cooperating with the industrial world?

 Chen Xingru : The two routes are in a progressive relationship. Invasive BCI does have higher accuracy, but its threshold is too high, and its stability, safety and ethical level are not acceptable to everyone. Non-invasive BCI is easy to wear, has high safety performance, covers healthy people, and can achieve commercial implementation faster. Products such as ear-mounted and head-mounted devices are lighter than Vision Pro.

Truth of Commercialization: ToB Clients, Consumer-Grade Products and "Brain Gym"

You once said that in the commercialization of the China region, To B is the main line. The cooperations with car companies, game companies, beauty brands, etc. that you are negotiating this year, what stage are they at? Have NDAs been signed or demos made?

 Chen Xingru : We are currently docking and negotiating on a large scale across all industries in China, and carrying out multi-dimensional cooperation and promotion. For the past years, we have brought our experience of commercial projects in Europe and the United States in recent years to the integration, adaptation and application of BCI knowledge and BCI technology in various industries.

Car companies are currently in the exploration stage, which is almost the industry with the longest technology implementation path. For example, the R&D cycle of the car companies we are docking with is 1-3 years, involving production lines and in-vehicle intelligent systems, so users may see brain control devices on cars in 1-3 years - but the projects actually started two years ago. We observe that many domestic automotive laboratories, such as Audi, Chery, BYD, FAW, etc., have begun to pay attention to BCI this year, wanting to know in which aspects BCI can be combined with automobiles.

● iEmotiv uses machine learning algorithms to detect driver attention and fatigue levels. When the driver's attention drops, the vehicle will automatically decelerate.

● Emotiv Play: Hearts & Heal (left) and Mindful Garden (right)

Games will be much faster. Our internal R&D and testing are completed, and products can be launched in a few months. In terms of cooperation process, we will sign NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) first, share technologies with each other and open ports. You can now directly download two cooperative games on Apple Store: Hearts & Heal and Mindful Garden.

In the "Neuromarketing" field, Nielsen IQ is our largest customer - it has the widest coverage in the neuro-marketing field and the largest user demand, and purchases a lot from us every year, docking with Fortune 500 companies. At present, we have signed some consumer marketing PR/advertising companies in China, as well as other large consumer goods, fashion brands, food and beverage enterprises, covering hundreds of clients in different fields such as electronics, household appliances, beauty, accessories, film and TV short dramas.

Does the China region have independent pricing power? Compared with competing headphones priced at 499 USD, what are the differences of our MN8?

 Chen Xingru : We work closely with the headquarters, and the pricing is set together with the headquarters - the price is consistent across all regions in the world, please refer to the official website (emotiv.com) as the standard.

Our products themselves focus on focus level and stress level. Paired with a mobile APP, after connecting, you can view your mental status throughout the day just like using Apple Watch. More red means you are very stressed all day, purple means you are using your brain at high intensity, and you will know you need to relax at this time - green and dark green represent a relatively relaxed state. Users can track their data every month and every year, compare it with the global distribution statistics of their peer groups, and know their brain health activity level.

The price of our toC products is between 2000 and 3000 RMB. The latest developed products are expected to be priced at around 2000 RMB, basically matching the price of domestic