Bridge Neurotech left stealth this week with $13.5M and a multi-year agreement to license Butterfly Network's ultrasound-on-a-chip platform. Butterfly disclosed the deal on October 8 under its Embedded program, with future development milestone payments and undisclosed financial terms.
The company is building sensors that read brain activity through the skull without surgery. Functional ultrasound tracks the blood oxygen rise where neurons fire more, and Bridge wants to decode that into intended movement or speech. General Catalyst, reMind Capital, Sunflower Capital and Scott Sandell funded the round.
Founder and CEO Will Biederman helped start Forest Neurotech, and Bridge is a spinout from it. Forest's remaining work continues as Arbor Neuroscience, a nonprofit focused on ultrasound neuromodulation. The first study, in Redwood City, enrolls healthy adults and people who already carry a PEEK or Longeviti cranioplasty implant.
The skull is the hard part. Bone scatters and absorbs sound and varies between people, so starting with cranioplasty patients tests the decoding models through a clean acoustic window before anyone solves the bone. Implanted interfaces will keep the lead on signal quality for years; a non-invasive device competes on who agrees to use it at all.