附近上门

, a Neuroscience-as-a-Service company developing brain-recording technologies, brought in its first outside investment Thursday–a $53 million Series C round of funding led by .

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The Los Angeles-based company has two technologies that help users observe the human mind in less costly and less invasive ways: Flux detects the magnetic fields generated by collective neural activity in the brain, while Flow detects cortical hemodynamics, such as blood flow. Customers use these technologies to gather, interpolate and correlate neurome data.

鈥淲e can objectively measure everything in our known universe, from our steps, to our heart rate, to the stars in the galaxy, but one of the only things we can鈥檛 yet quantify is our mind,鈥� Kernel founder and CEO told 附近上门 News. 鈥淚n 2016, I set off to find a way to build technology that would allow us to do high-fidelity imaging of the brain. What we’ve built is an order of magnitude change in cost, accessibility and size.鈥�

, , , and Johnson also participated in the round. Prior to this investment, Johnson had been bootstrapping the company with a $54 million cash infusion since it was founded in 2016. This Series C gives the company a of $107 million.

As part of the investment, General Catalyst鈥檚 joins Kernel鈥檚 board of directors.

鈥淭he vision fueling Kernel is one of the most audacious imaginable,鈥� Clark said in a written statement. 鈥淏ut more practically speaking, Kernel鈥檚 engineering accomplishments have the potential to enable more neuroscience progress in the next few years than has been accomplished in the last few decades.鈥�

The new capital will be used to further technology development, as well as sales, marketing and customer success, Johnson said. In May, the company announced the of its NaaS platform, enabling access to brain-imaging devices and the ability to perform experiments remotely.

Johnson said he used the initial $54 million to figure out if there was even anything they could do; there was. Customers are using Kernel鈥檚 tools in different ways, he said. One is trying to improve an image recognition algorithm with brain data, which was not previously possible due to limitations in incumbent brain-recording technology.

Now, Kernel is scaling its technology and looking at how to get it to more people.

鈥淭he investment from General Catalyst and Khosla signals that we are ready,鈥� he added. 鈥淜ernel will allow for systematic quantification of the thing that makes us, 鈥榰s,鈥� which is the brain. It’s the last thing that we haven’t been able to measure, and it鈥檚 the next major platform to emerge in the world.鈥�

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