MintNeuro Raises £2M to Build the Next Generation of Neural Implant Hardware

MintNeuro, a London-based bioelectronics company, has raised £2 million from the Imperial College Enterprise Fund (ICEF), Empirical Ventures, and Plug & Play to develop its advanced semiconductor and bioelectronics platform for neural implant devices. The company is designing the core hardware components — custom chips, electrodes, and integrated circuits — that enable neural implants to record and stimulate neural activity with higher precision, lower power consumption, and greater longevity than current-generation devices allow.

Neural implants — devices that interface directly with the nervous system to treat neurological conditions — are one of the most technically demanding categories in medical devices. They must operate reliably for years or decades inside the human body, survive the mechanical stress of tissue movement, maintain stable electrical contact with neurons, and do all of this while consuming minimal power from a battery small enough to be implanted subcutaneously. Current-generation devices for epilepsy management, deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease, and spinal cord stimulation for chronic pain have demonstrated clinical value, but they are limited by the hardware constraints of conventional implant electronics: bulky devices, frequent battery replacement procedures, limited channel counts that constrain the resolution of neural recording and stimulation, and power requirements that limit how much signal processing can be done inside the device itself.

MintNeuro's platform addresses these constraints through a combination of custom integrated circuit design and novel electrode materials and fabrication techniques. The company's chips are designed specifically for the neurological interface application — optimised for ultra-low power consumption, high channel density, and the specific signal characteristics of extracellular neural recording. This allows implants built on MintNeuro's platform to record from more neural sites simultaneously, last longer between charging or replacement, and implement more sophisticated closed-loop stimulation strategies that respond to neural activity in real time rather than delivering fixed stimulation patterns.

The Imperial College Enterprise Fund backing reflects the company's deep roots in Imperial's bioelectronics and neural engineering research community. The funding will support continued development of the chip and electrode platform, preclinical validation of key performance metrics, and the regulatory and quality management work required to advance towards clinical devices.

Sources

• MintNeuro — company website