Hemispheric has emerged from stealth after securing $52 million in early-stage funding to advance Descartes, its NeuroAI foundation model designed to decode non-invasive brain activity and support precision brain health. The company plans to use the investment to expand deployments with healthcare, pharmaceutical and government partners, strengthen its global brain data network, advance regulatory pathways and grow its U.S. operations.
Founded by computational neuroscientist Hagai Lalazar, PhD, and Gidi Littwin, co-founder of RealFace, the company has spent more than six years developing Descartes and the infrastructure required to train it. The 6-billion-parameter model was built using a proprietary dataset comprising more than 250,000 hours of multimodal EEG and behavioral recordings collected from over 100,000 participants through Hemispheric’s research network.
The platform combines a lightweight dry EEG headset with a 15-minute assessment delivered through a tablet or smartphone application. The resulting brain activity data is translated into quantitative insights intended to assist clinicians with diagnosis, treatment selection and longitudinal monitoring. Hemispheric is initially targeting applications in post-traumatic stress disorder, mild traumatic brain injury, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Commenting on the company’s vision, Hagai Lalazar, PhD, co-founder and CEO of Hemispheric, said, “Every major organ in the body has objective tests, except the brain. Each person's brain is unique, like a snowflake, which is why current attempts at one-size-fits-all treatments fall short. We are working toward a future where you walk into your primary care office, get a brain test as routine as a blood draw, and leave with information you and your clinician can actually use to improve your health.”
Gidi Littwin, co-founder and CTO, added, “Non-invasive neurotechnology is the only path to democratizing brain health. The challenge has always been variability: the same brain signal can look completely different across individuals. At a very large scale, it becomes something you can model, making it possible to measure brain function accurately and use it in real-world settings without surgery.”
Hemispheric has demonstrated the platform to leadership at the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health and is pursuing a broader regulatory strategy. The company expects the new funding to support deployment across U.S. and European markets while expanding the clinical and research applications of its NeuroAI platform.
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