"National Team" Enters the Arena: CAS-Backed Implantable BCI Startup Secures Tens of Millions in Funding

At the beginning of 2026, China's brain-computer interface industry reached a crucial point of capitalization. Multiple companies secured intensive financing, while industrial capital also established special funds, making the sector hotter than ever. Another round of brain-computer interface financing has just been completed.Recently, Zhongke Imagery (Nanjing) Technology Co., Ltd. ("Zhongke Imagery"), a rising company in China's implantable brain-computer interface field, announced the completion of its first round of financing worth tens of millions of yuan.

This round of financing was jointly invested by Rui Xiang Capital, Li Ming Venture Capital, and Nanjing Industrial Investment Co., Ltd. According to publicly available information, Zhongke Imagery's strength stems from its distinct "national team" genes. The core team of over 20 people spans the fields of neuroscience, AI large models, micro-nano technology, micro-operation robots, optical engineering, clinical neurosurgery, and high-end medical devices, establishing a full-stack product layout from intent decoding, minimally invasive implantation to embodied intelligent robot interaction.

Dr. Yushan

Founder and Chief Scientist of Zhongke ImageryDr. Yushan, currently serving as a researcher at the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the director of the Brain Atlas and Brain-inspired Intelligence Laboratory. He also serves as the deputy director of the State Key Laboratory of Pattern Recognition and the Beijing Key Laboratory of Brain Network Group. He received his bachelor's and doctoral degrees in biology from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2000 and 2005, respectively. From 2005 to 2014, he conducted postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Germany and the National Institute of Mental Health in the United States. In September 2014, he returned to China and joined the Institute of Automation, where he has been deeply engaged in the fields of neuroscience and brain-intelligence crossover for over two decades.

Dr. Yu Shan is dedicated to integrating experimental neuroscience with computational modeling, exploring the network mechanisms of cortical information processing, developing brain-inspired artificial intelligence algorithms, and promoting the technical implementation of novel brain-computer interfaces. His research achievements have been published in over 30 articles in journals and conferences such as Nature Machine Intelligence, Journal of Neuroscience, and CVPR. He also serves as a supervisor for the Chinese Society of Cognitive Science and a professional committee member in various national-level societies.

Zhongke Imagery was founded in 2024, with its headquarters located in the Nanjing Qilin Science and Technology Innovation Park. It is a brain-computer interface technology company incubated by the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The company focuses on minimally invasive implantable brain-computer interface systems and adheres to the concept of "Brain Science + AI Empowerment." It is committed to building a new generation of interactive systems for brain-computer integration, providing safer and more effective clinical solutions for patients with movement disorders, refractory neurological diseases, and sensory impairments.

Currently, the company has formed a tri-regional collaborative R&D layout: Nanjing focuses on brain-computer interface surgical robots, Beijing tackles neural encoding and decoding algorithms and flexible electrodes, and Shanghai concentrates on active implantable medical devices.

In terms of technology, Zhongke Imagery has taken the lead in forging a differentiated path of "intent decoding + minimally invasive" in the field of implantable brain-computer interfaces.

First, unlike traditional solutions that rely on thousands of channels, it leverages deep AI algorithm expertise to quickly and accurately decode movement intentions with just dozens of channels, predict high-precision 3D trajectories, and significantly reduce hardware load and response delay.

This time, targeting the pain points of craniotomy injuries, it has pioneered laser skull micro-hole technology with a hole diameter of only 300 micrometers, causing far less damage than traditional methods. Combined with a self-developed flexible electrode implantation robot, it achieves "acupuncture-level" minimally invasive implantation, significantly lowering the surgical threshold and risks, paving the way for large-scale clinical applications.

Finally, in terms of scenario expansion, Zhongke Imagery promotes the deep integration of brain-computer interfaces with embodied intelligence.

Relying on real-time intent decoding, intelligent planning, and motion execution technology, the robot becomes a natural extension of the limbs, eliminating the lag traditionally associated with brain control, truly achieving "think it, do it." At the same time, innovative data alignment algorithms and pre-trained brain-computer interface decoding large models break through the bottleneck of non-transferable neural data across individuals, days, and tasks, significantly shortening the patient's learning cycle, bringing mind control from the laboratory into everyday life.

Team Discovers Positional Coding Mechanism in Motor Systems for the First Time

Overall, Zhongke Imagery, relying on nearly a decade of brain-computer technology accumulation at the Institute of Automation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has crossed the angel round exploration period in less than two years since its establishment, directly announcing the completion of a multi-million yuan Series A round of financing. Its clear product path of "minimally invasive + intent decoding + embodied intelligence," solid top-tier interdisciplinary team, and capital's consensus on the industrialization turning point all jointly confirm that this "national team" startup is standing at the critical node of brain-computer interfaces moving from laboratories to real-world scenarios, with the potential to become a major industry driver and standard definer.