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Bridge Neurotech has announced $13.5 million in funding to develop a brain-computer interface (BCI) that aims to image brain activity through the skull with ultrasound and decode it in real time. The company is still at an early research stage: it has not reported a working communication device, decoding results or clinical benefits.
What Bridge Neurotech is building
Bridge’s goal is a non-invasive BCI: a system that would sense brain activity without surgically implanting a device, then translate the resulting signals into useful information. The company says its approach uses functional ultrasound to image changes in blood flow through the skull. Its intended next step is to decode those images in real time.
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“Read brains” is therefore a description of the ambition, not a demonstrated capability. Bridge’s own materials describe unresolved engineering problems, and its first study is research rather than a test of a finished communication product.
How ultrasound could reveal brain activity
In its explanation of the method, Bridge says an ultrasound array sends sound pulses into tissue and listens for returning echoes. Echoes from still tissue tend to repeat; changes in echoes from moving red blood cells can indicate blood flow. The company’s proposed chain is that neural activity increases local oxygen demand, nearby blood vessels widen, and those blood-flow changes can be mapped to brain activity. A decoding model would then need to interpret the images.
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This is Bridge’s description of its intended method, not a reported result from its own system. The company also points to ultrasound’s portability, speed and lack of ionizing radiation as general properties of the modality. Those characteristics do not establish that Bridge can yet image or decode signals reliably through intact skulls.
Why reading through an intact skull is difficult
Skull bone changes the signal
Bridge identifies transmission through the skull as a central challenge. Bone scatters and absorbs sound, and the company says those effects vary from person to person. That variability can make it harder to form useful images through an intact skull.
Images still need to become meaningful output
Even if the system produces images, a model must interpret them quickly and consistently. Bridge says it has not found a single answer to building a decoder that works in real time across different people. The company’s goal is not evidence that such cross-person performance has been achieved.
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Bridge says its first study is enrolling in Redwood City, California. The company describes two groups: healthy adults aged 18 or older, and adults who have had a cranioplasty with a PEEK or Longeviti implant. Bridge says the implant group offers a comparison reference because sound passes through the implant more easily than through bone; it also aims to image healthy adults through intact skulls.
WIRED describes the study as observational, with no treatment or diagnosis involved, and reports that a small ultrasound probe is placed on the side of the head. Bridge’s founder letter does not give a participant total, protocol identifier, results or completion date. The study should not be read as proof of a functioning communication interface or clinical benefit.
How Bridge’s goal differs from earlier ultrasound BCI work
WIRED reports that researchers from Caltech and the University of Southern California demonstrated an ultrasound-based BCI that read and decoded human brain activity in a 2024 study. In WIRED’s account, that method required removing part of the skull and replacing it with a window that ultrasound could pass through. The key distinction in Bridge’s stated goal is to image through an intact skull, avoiding that opening—not a demonstrated performance advantage.
The available information does not support a quantitative performance comparison between Bridge and other BCI companies. Useful distinctions are whether a system requires surgery or a skull opening, which signal it measures, whether it has been shown to work across people, what stage of evidence it has reached, and whether it is commercially available.
Funding and Butterfly Network partnership
In an October 2026 founder letter, Bridge said it had raised $13.5 million from General Catalyst, reMind Capital, Sunflower Capital, Scott Sandell and other investors. The letter does not specify a funding-round label or name every investor. The financing supports development; it does not establish that the proposed system works.
Butterfly Network announced on October 6, 2026, that it had entered an R&D agreement with Bridge through Butterfly Embedded. The announcement says Bridge will use Butterfly’s programmable Ultrasound-on-Chip technology to pursue real-time brain imaging and interaction using sound without surgery or implants. This is an announced research partnership and intended direction, not a reported product outcome.
What is—and is not—established
- Established: Bridge has announced funding, described its ultrasound-based approach, begun recruiting for a first study in Redwood City, and announced an R&D partnership with Butterfly Network.
- Still unproven in the cited coverage: reliable imaging through intact skulls across people, real-time decoding performance, communication capability, clinical benefit, or a device available to buy.
Sources: Bridge Neurotech founder letter; Bridge Neurotech approach; WIRED coverage; Butterfly Network partnership announcement.
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