A company that did not exist at the start of this year has now raised more for non-invasive brain-computer interfaces than most Chinese medical-device firms raise before they ship anything.

Gestala, a Chengdu-based developer of ultrasound brain-computer interface (BCI) systems, closed RMB 420 million, or roughly USD 62 million, in a round it calls Angel+, first reported in early July and detailed in an August 26 company statement. No valuation was disclosed. Accounts of who backed it differ: the company own release names HSG, Lens Technology, Sinovation Ventures and C Capital, with follow-on money from Dalton Venture, Seas Capital, Tsing Song Capital and Gobi Partners, and identifies no lead, while trade coverage names Huaying Capital as lead and adds China Electronics Health Fund, Lingang Sci-Tech Investment and Furong Capital. Deal-feed listings that log the round as a USD 61 million seed extension in a biotech company located in the United States are wrong on three counts — this is a neurotech and medical-device round, the round label is Angel+, and Chengdu is in Sichuan, China.

What the company does

Gestala builds phased-array focused ultrasound systems intended to read from and stimulate deep brain circuits without surgery, an approach it and its backers describe as China first ultrasound BCI effort. The pitch is that ultrasound reaches structures that scalp electrodes cannot, without the implant risk that defines the invasive field. The lead indication is chronic pain, with the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex as the initial target; depression, Alzheimer disease, Parkinson disease, stroke rehabilitation and epilepsy sit further back. The company was launched in January 2026 by chief executive Phoenix Peng, previously a co-founder of NeuroXess, alongside Shanda Group founder Tianqiao Chen. A first-generation system and an accompanying brain foundation model are promised by the end of 2026, with Class III device registration work underway in China.

The numbers behind the round

The Angel+ round follows an RMB 150 million angel round in March, about USD 21.6 million, co-led by Guosheng Capital and Dalton Venture, with Tsing Song Capital, Gobi Partners, Fourier Intelligence, Liepin and Seas Capital participating. That earlier round was reported at a valuation in the USD 100 million to 200 million range; nothing comparable has been disclosed for Angel+. Together the two rounds come to RMB 570 million, or about USD 84 million, raised inside six months by a company with no product on the market.

Why the timing matters

What separates this from a typical pre-clinical raise is where the money goes. Gestala is putting it into a Chengdu headquarters and manufacturing site of more than 16,000 square metres — it uses the term super factory — plus a Shanghai centre for brain foundation models and multimodal neural data, and has flagged an overseas base in Singapore or Hong Kong. That is capital allocated to production capacity and regulatory groundwork rather than to a longer research runway, which only makes sense if the company expects a device pathway to open within a couple of years. It is also a bet on the quieter half of the BCI field: while implanted electrodes attract the attention, a non-invasive system that clears a Class III pathway for pain would reach patients without a neurosurgeon in the room.

Source

PR Newswire — "China BCI Race Accelerates: Gestala Raises US$84 Million in Six Months"