Brain Patch AI has just closed a ‘pre-seed plus’ round of funding, securing £250,000, valuing the company at $10.5 million.
The valuation reflects the company’s intellectual property and the potential of its E-Meditation device, a headset that uses implantable neurotechnology to deliver “a meditation-like state of calm and stress relief within seconds, anywhere in the world, at the push of a button.”
The company was founded in 2018 by Nikolai Vysokov, a PhD in Neuroscience (Israeli University), and entrepreneur/diplomat Dowden Trekhanov.
Nikolai says, “My friend of 20 years, Dowlen, approached me in 2018. He was tossing around various ideas, but at the time I wanted to work for Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface venture, Neuralink. The turning point came when Dowlen half-jokingly said, ‘We can turn this into a business and eventually acquire Neuralink.'”
Before joining the board of directors of the Kazakhstan sovereign wealth fund in London, Dowlen worked at the Kazakhstan Ministry of Trade.
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“The perfect combination of science and entrepreneurship was born,” says Nikolai, “and so we set out on a journey to innovate computer-brain interfaces. Although our goal was somewhat vague, we worked hard to develop a non-invasive stimulation platform, and after much research we found that a stimulation site behind the ear was highly effective.”
E-Meditation is not a medical device: it is a range of microcurrent stimulation protocols combined with an acoustic experience, implemented in a headset and driven by a mobile application, depending on your mood and needs.
“It was a bold move, we came to Cambridge and had three meetings,” the intrepid pair say of their decision to move from London to Cambridge. Nicolai was London-educated (King’s and Imperial), and Doren also spent five years in a directorial role in London.
The first was a conversation with Max Bautin from IQ Capital, the second with Christian Bunke from the international property and patent law firm Basck, and the third with Professor Bazbek Davletov.
“Christian Bunke and Professor Davletov were our first advisors, and many of our subsequent advisors became investors,” says Dowlen, “as did our other Cambridge connection, the angel Matthew Cleavelly.”
The E-Meditation device looks like a standard headset, but has custom-made ear pads with built-in electrodes.
“We have a brain and the rest of the body,” says Nikolai. “The skull has a very effective protection, so it is difficult to influence the brain, but the highway to the brain is accessible through weak electrical currents acting on various cranial nerves, especially the vagus nerve. Unlike the effects on the vestibular and optic nerves, the effect of vagus nerve stimulation is more subtle, but this stimulation produces a feeling of relaxation immediately after the stimulation begins.”
The microcurrent waveforms and sounds sent to the headset are controlled through an app that offers a variety of protocols for meditation, digital alcohol demos, and other content and music. You can add and customize waveforms and content, and manage your subscriptions remotely from our server. Our app is available for Apple and Android, but you must purchase the device to use the simulation.
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“It’s already available in the U.S.,” Dowlen adds.
Nikolai continues, “There are retailers in the US selling the E-Meditation headset for $1,000; in the UK, the equivalent price is that plus VAT. We’re not a medical device company, so we won’t make any claims. But like traditional meditation, E-Meditation has immediate effects that develop over time as you use it more frequently, making you more restorative. And meditators often liken the sensations they get from our device to a deep meditative state; some trained meditators say they can achieve a state that would normally take 30 minutes in less than a minute.”
What are digital alcohol options?
“It makes you feel slightly tipsy for a few seconds,” Dowlen replies. “It also gives you a bout of positive emotions. It’s like the feeling you get after a glass of champagne, but it only lasts for a few seconds. You feel lightheaded and a little high. If your nervous system is normal, it creates a pleasurable sensation. It’s not addictive.”
“At some point, we realized that everyone is stressed all the time. Then corona came along. At that time, one of the protocols was supposed to help regulate the immune system of corona patients. But we found that E-Meditation for relaxation was very popular and very much needed by nurses and doctors themselves. We received letters from them saying that they wanted to use this device regularly. That means that the digital alcohol function will be useful for scholars, students, traders, entrepreneurs, doctors and nurses.”
Dowlen added: “Keith [Heppell, the Cambridge Independent’s photographer] I tried out the headset and really enjoyed the digital alcohol experience.”
I asked Keith how it was.
“It felt really weird to have been sober my whole life, apart from the occasional glass of wine or cider at family gatherings, and then get really drunk,” he replied, adding that there were three levels of alcoholic options: “Level one was where barely anything happened, level two was a bit weird and level three was where I nearly collapsed.”
He added: “It’s a great idea. If you’re sitting at home and need a break, it takes you 15 minutes to make a cup of coffee, but the effect is immediate from start to finish, with no aftereffects.”
“It’s easy to understand why Arm and the big companies in the science park would want their employees to have these devices.”
The Brain Patch team consists of Nikolai, Doulen, CTO Yaroslav Gakshenko, lead neuroscientist Sergiy Tukayev, firmware engineer Alexander Shiryaev, and head of AI Octavio Schiller. The company is incorporated in the UK and Dublin, but its operations include contracts in the US, Germany, Poland, Kazakhstan, and China.
Investors were involved from the beginning.
“We’ve had four or five funding rounds so far,” Dowlen said. “We started in 2018 when we were founded, then we had an acceleration round in 2019, another one in 2020, and another one in 2021. They were all very small rounds, but the reason for that was, firstly, we had been pretty successful with EU grants, Innovate UK and BAFTA grants, so we didn’t need any money and we were in the prototype stage anyway. This round we just closed is pre-seed, and it’s also an extension of the 2021 round where we raised $500,000.”
“We needed money in 2022 and 2023 but it was difficult to raise money for obvious reasons so we were lucky to get it when we didn’t need it. But now we’ve raised £250,000 and have managed to attract five new investors as well as an angel investor.”
“NeuroMotion Ventures, a specialist neurotechnology fund based in the Netherlands and Germany, was the lead strategic investor in 2021. US venture capital firm Big Sky Capital joined this year, as did Cambridge Business Angels, including Matthew Clivery, and BasqueInvest. The $10.5 million valuation is key to understanding the interest.”
Dowlen added: “The funding will be used to set up manufacturing in various locations, including Berlin and my hometown of Almaty, Kazakhstan, and we are also manufacturing a number of parts in the UK.”
There has also been significant interest from the music industry, with Warner Music among the early adopters.
“They loved our prototype,” says Doulen, “and they introduced us to some of their artists, including the French classical pianist Liopee, and we based one of the protocols on his piano pieces. [Corsican singer] Barbara Colotti was recording an album and E-Meditation helped her deal with stress and sleep problems, as well as relax and work in the studio.
“Our vision is to have a Brain Patch AI device in every home and business around the world,” Nikolai says.
