Neuranics raises $8M for touchless magnetic sensing technology

Neuranics, a Scottish deep-tech semiconductor company, has secured $8 million in seed funding for its magnetic sensing technology.

Blackfinch Ventures led the round, with participation from Archangels, Old College Capital, the University of Glasgow, Par Equity and the University of Edinburgh’s venture investment fund. 

WHAT IT DOES

Neuranics offers ultra-sensitive, low-power magnetic sensing technology that detects tiny signals from the human body to track muscle activity for gesture recognition and heart signals without touching the skin. 

The company’s gesture recognition Tunneling Magnetoresistance (TMR) quantum sensing technology consists of custom semiconductor designs and AI-enabled hardware and software. 

Neuranics, founded in 2021, is a spin-out from the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. 

The company will use the funds to accelerate its international growth and commercial adoption of its technology, expand its team, and enable the integration of its TMR technology into high-tech markets, such as digital health, extended reality (XR) and wearables. 

The company touts that it is actively collaborating with Tier-1 semiconductor and XR manufacturers to demonstrate its value and production readiness in industrial, consumer and healthcare markets. 

“The team at Neuranics have shown us that they can not only accurately detect finite movement but do so whilst consuming low power, which clearly opens up a tremendous number of applications across business and industry. Neuranics have an exciting market for their technology, and we look forward to working with the team,” Kimberley Hay, senior ventures manager at Blackfinch Ventures, said in a statement. 

MARKET SNAPSHOT

The funding comes less than six months after Neuranics garnered $700,000 in seed funding in a round led by Inflection Point Ventures. 

A month before, the company announced it secured an £800,000 ($1.03 million) grant from Scottish Enterprise. The grant aimed to support a £2.4 million ($3.11 million) project that uses magnetomyography (MMG) technology and machine learning to interpret muscle movements using wristbands. 

The project initially targeted XR applications, enabling gesture recognition and muscle activity monitoring using wristbands for natural gesture-based interactions in immersive environments. 

In 2023, the company garnered a $2.3 million investment led by Par Equity and announced the launch of a magnetic sensor development kit that records the magnetic activity of one’s heart and transfers that information to a smartphone, tablet or laptop over Bluetooth for 24/7 recording and analysis.