Neurable

Neurable
Information
Industry	Neurotechnology, brain-computer interfaces
Founded	2015
Founder	Ramses Alcaide, Michael Thompson, Adam Molnar
Headquarters	Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Notable Personnel	Ramses Alcaide (CEO), Adam Molnar (COO)
Products	Awakening (VR demo game), Enten, MW75 Neuro, MW75 Neuro LT, Neurable One
Website	https://www.neurable.com

Neurable is a Boston-based neurotechnology company that develops non-invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) technology based on electroencephalography (EEG). It began as a University of Michigan spinout built on the doctoral research of its CEO, Ramses Alcaide, and first targeted virtual reality and augmented reality input. At SIGGRAPH 2017 the company showed Awakening, a VR game demo played on a modified HTC Vive in which players selected and moved objects with brain signals instead of handheld controllers.

In 2020 Neurable moved away from hands-free input for AR and VR toward EEG sensors built into everyday wearables. Its products since then are over-ear headphones that estimate focus and other cognitive states: the MW75 Neuro, made with Master & Dynamic and released in 2024, and the in-house Neurable One, announced on 1 October 2026.

Reviewed 15 October 2026. Every date, figure, investor, product spec, price and quote checked against the cited UploadVR, IEEE Spectrum, MIT Technology Review, Global Venturing, MedCity, Trimble, Auganix, Freethink, Master & Dynamic, Neurable, PCWorld, Gizmodo, audioXpress and Voices of VR sources, plus Crossref records for the two papers. About review dates.

History

University of Michigan origins

Alcaide developed the foundation of Neurable's technology while working toward his PhD at the University of Michigan's Direct Brain Interface laboratory. He received his doctorate in 2016, and the company was co-founded with Michael Thompson, then an MBA student. Neurable's own timeline dates a signal-processing breakthrough at the university to 2011 and the founding of the company to 2015, and its website lists Adam Molnar, the chief operating officer, as Alcaide's co-founder. It took part in the university's TechArb student accelerator in 2015 and won more than $300,000 at the 2016 Rice Business Plan Competition.

The company's first application was clinical. In 2015 MedCity News described a Neurable system, built with the sensor maker Wearable Sensing, that used the P300 brain response (a signal that appears about 300 milliseconds after a person sees a target) to help children with cerebral palsy take the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. A University of Michigan study of this kind of test administration, by R. E. Alcaide-Aguirre, S. A. Warschausky, D. Brown, A. Aref and J. E. Huggins, appeared in the Journal of Neural Engineering in 2017. It tested an asynchronous event-related potential BCI version of the PPVT-IV on 11 typically developing participants and 19 people with cerebral palsy; scores on the BCI version and the standard test were highly correlated (r = 0.95).

Seed funding and the VR/AR SDK

In December 2016 Neurable announced a $2 million seed round. UploadVR reported that the round was led by Boston Syndicate, with the Kraft Group and NXT Ventures among the other investors; Global Venturing also listed Point Judith Capital and Loup Ventures. The money was to finish a software development kit (SDK) that Neurable planned to release to select developers in the second half of 2017. The company described the SDK as platform agnostic and compatible with all major AR and VR headsets. Thompson, then vice president of business development, said users would be able to "open applications, scroll menus, select options or even type using only their brain." In July 2017 the University of Michigan's student-run Zell Lurie Founders Fund made an undisclosed follow-on investment.

Awakening and SIGGRAPH 2017

Neurable showed Awakening at SIGGRAPH 2017 in Los Angeles. The game was made with estudiofuture, a VR graphics company based in Madrid, as a demonstration of Neurable's technology; Alcaide said the company was "not really a game company or a hardware company." The player is a child held in a government laboratory who discovers telekinetic powers and has to escape, fighting robotic guards along the way. In MIT Technology Review's account, players picked up and threw toys such as a balloon dog, alphabet blocks and stacking rings.

The hardware was an HTC Vive whose elastic rear strap was replaced by a Neurable strap carrying seven off-the-shelf dry electrodes from Wearable Sensing. Eye tracking from the German company SMI was added for the game portion. The system used event-related potentials: objects in the scene were highlighted in turn, and the software detected the brain's response when the player focused on the object they meant to act on. Neurable chose this over motor imagery, which it said felt unnatural and needed long training. Alcaide described two control modes, a pure EEG mode and a hybrid mode in which the eyes act like a mouse pointer and the brain response confirms the selection. Players first went through a short calibration; Alcaide told MIT Technology Review that it had been cut from 10 minutes to a couple of minutes. In a Voices of VR interview recorded at SIGGRAPH 2017 and published in 2019, Alcaide said the electrode count had come down from 256 gel electrodes in the lab to seven dry ones, with about two as a future goal.

Neurable said its technology lay in its machine learning software and was hardware agnostic, so straps could be built for other headsets such as Oculus or HoloLens. Its stated plan was to supply straps to VR arcades and developers in the short term and, in the long term, license its software to headset makers that built electrodes into their products. Michael Thompson told Attractions Management that he expected AR and VR headset makers to eventually build brain sensors directly into their hardware. In January 2018 IEEE Spectrum reported that the company planned to bring Awakening to VR arcades worldwide later that year and was offering a developer kit to third parties. The magazine added that smaller sensors of this kind could later be used to control AR glasses without a smartphone, gestures or voice commands.

Enterprise work and the move to headphones

On 3 January 2019 Neurable and Trimble announced a collaboration to explore BCI technology in transportation and in architecture, engineering and construction. The companies planned to combine brain activity with eye tracking for training, driver safety and the safety of high-risk field workers, and to add insight to simulations and design reviews. Aviad Almagor, director of Trimble's Mixed Reality Program, said a new interaction paradigm was needed to merge digital and physical environments.

In December 2019 Neurable raised a $6 million Series A led by M Ventures, with Innospark Ventures and existing investors Loup Ventures and Point Judith Capital. The announcement said the company would expand its focus from VR applications to consumer devices, starting with brain-sensing headphones that measure cognitive state and give hands-free control of mobile devices. According to the company, it had by then co-developed a VR game with Red Bull that debuted at Red Bull's Lollapalooza outpost in August 2019 and was deploying its software in VR simulation training. Jamie Alders, vice president of product, who had spent more than ten years in engineering and product management at Bose, said headphones were "the ideal brain-sensing wearable." Neurable's timeline describes 2020 as the year it pivoted from hands-free input in AR and VR to scalable wearable platforms.

On 27 April 2021 Neurable opened an Indiegogo campaign for Enten, prototype headphones with 16 soft EEG sensors, offered to backers at $200 with first shipments planned for May 2022. The company says the campaign was fully funded in under 30 minutes and calls Enten a reference product. A company preprint posted in June 2021 reported EEG from 132 participants across 337 sessions recorded with Enten; the authors said the headphones performed comparably to established EEG hardware on standard protocols and that their focus model captured 80% ± 4.1% of the distractions present in the experiments.

MW75 Neuro and later funding

In May 2024 Neurable announced a further $13 million from investors including Ultratech Capital Partners, TRAC, Pace Ventures and Metaplanet, bringing its total funding to more than $30 million. The same release reported $5 million in US Department of Defense contracts for soldier health and performance work and said the company had partnered with the Air Force Research Laboratory's 711th Human Performance Wing to validate its technology, work that led to the defense contracts. Master & Dynamic opened pre-orders for the MW75 Neuro on 24 September 2024 at US$699, with Europe and the UK to follow in spring 2025 at €729 and £629. The headphones carry 12 channels of soft fabric EEG sensors in the ear pads. A lighter MW75 Neuro LT followed on 30 September 2025 at US$499, keeping the 12-channel sensors.

At CES 2026 in January, Neurable showed an unnamed prototype of a HyperX-branded gaming headset developed with HP. It is used with Prime, training software that gives visual cues as a player's measured concentration sharpens; no price or release date was announced.

Neurable One

Neurable announced Neurable One on 1 October 2026. Unlike the MW75 Neuro, it was designed and built in-house without Master & Dynamic, and it is priced at US$499. It has six EEG sensors around each ear, active noise cancellation and 40 mm beryllium-dome drivers, with battery life rated at 22 hours for audio or 12 hours with EEG running. At launch it was taking pre-orders, fulfilled four to eight weeks after ordering. Neurable classifies it as a consumer wellness device, not a medical device. Writing in IEEE Spectrum, Gwendolyn Rak noted that the company's 20-person MW75 focus experiment was published on its own blog, and quoted UC San Diego researcher Arnaud Delorme, who said dry-electrode EEG is usually very noisy and warned that overpromising could damage the field.

Products

Product	Year	Type	Notes
Awakening	2017	VR game demo	Shown at SIGGRAPH 2017; made with estudiofuture; HTC Vive with a seven-electrode EEG strap
Enten	2021	EEG headphones (reference product)	Indiegogo campaign from 27 April 2021; 16 soft EEG sensors; first shipments planned for May 2022
MW75 Neuro	2024	EEG headphones	Made with Master & Dynamic; 12-channel EEG; US$699
MW75 Neuro LT	2025	EEG headphones	Lighter version of the MW75 Neuro; 12-channel EEG; US$499
HyperX gaming headset prototype	2026	EEG gaming headset (prototype)	HyperX-branded, developed with HP; shown at CES 2026; used with Prime training software; no price or date announced
Neurable One	2026	EEG headphones	Designed in-house; 12 EEG sensors; US$499; announced 1 October 2026

XR work

From its 2016 seed round until its 2020 pivot, Neurable pitched EEG as a hands-free "brain mouse" for head-mounted displays: Alcaide told IEEE Spectrum in 2017 that "What VR lacks right now is a hands-free mouse, and we've essentially created a brain mouse." Its SIGGRAPH demo combined EEG with eye tracking, and the Trimble collaboration aimed the same pairing at mixed reality training and design review in construction and transportation. After 2020 the company stopped presenting itself as an AR/VR input maker and turned to headphones, although in 2026 it said it was pursuing OEM integration and licensing of its EEG technology for headphones, gaming headsets, helmets and hearing protection.

See also

• Brain-computer interface
• Electroencephalography
• OpenBCI
• CTRL-labs
• Eye tracking