Humm Secures $2.6M Seed Funding to Commercialize Wearable Patch for Memory Enhancement

VCBeat (WeChat Official Account: vcbeat) learned from foreign media reports that on December 19, 2019, Humm, a U.S. healthcare wearable device provider, announced the completion of a $2.6 million seed funding round. The round was led by Blueyard Capital, with co-investment from CRCM Venture Capital and Berkeley SkyDeck Fund.

Alongside this financing round, Jason Whitmire, a partner at Blueyard, and Ariel Poler, a renowned entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, have joined the board of directors of Humm.

Humm, founded in June 2017, is a wearable device provider headquartered in California, USA. Reportedly, this round of financing will be used to launch Humm’s first flagship product—a wearable patch—that modulates the neural circuits underlying memory via the company’s mobile application, thereby making the learning process more efficient and effortless for users.

Reportedly, the wearable patch produced by Humm has been tested in neuroscience clinical trials at UCSF (University of California San Francisco Health). The results indicate that users need only apply the patch to their forehead and leave it on for 30 minutes before learning. After 15 minutes of study, their learning efficiency improves by nearly 20%. Currently, this patch device is being used by the U.S. Air Force in pilot training. The market price for the patch is $5 per unit.

The development of this product benefits from scientists' years of research on electrical stimulation of brain memory. In short, electrical stimulation can evoke brainwaves and enhance the ability that neuroscientists call working memory, thereby increasing the amount of information a person can retain per unit of time. The Humm patch works by emitting a small electrical pulse to trigger neurons to resonate at similar frequencies. By prompting more neurons to work together, it ultimately achieves the goal of stimulating multiple neurons to collaboratively process information.

Iain McIntyre, CEO and co-founder of Humm, stated that the target audience for the Humm patch is middle-aged, middle-class consumers seeking to acquire new skills or learn new languages. Iain McIntyre remarked, “In our tests this year involving hundreds of early-access users, it was evident that participants accelerated their language learning pace and retained more reading material in a shorter period of time through the use of our product.”

Blueyard Capital, founded in 2016, is a venture capital firm headquartered in Berlin. Blueyard Capital focuses on investing in early-stage startups.

Berkeley SkyDeck Fund, established in October 2017, is a venture capital fund under the University of California, Berkeley’s SkyDeck program. The fund supports research and education at leading academic institutions worldwide by donating 50% of its carried interest to the University of California, Berkeley.

CRCM Ventures, established in 2006 and headquartered in San Francisco, USA, is a venture capital firm investing in startups in the United States and China. It is a subsidiary of the investment management company ChinaRock Capital Management.

(Compiled by Wang Fang)