OpenBCI — Non-Invasive Consumer EEG · fobi

OpenBCI

Provides open-source EEG, EMG, and ECG biosensing hardware and software for researchers and developers building BCI applications. Originated from a 2013 Kickstarter. Product portfolio includes Cyton, Ganglion, and Galea VR-integrated headsets. Strong developer community and educational presence.

The de facto open-source standard for non-invasive BCI experimentation, enabling thousands of independent projects and academic labs worldwide.

openbci.com Non-Invasive Consumer EEG

United Statesprivate

At a glance

Total raised

$1.8M

last round seed

Headcount

11-50

approximate · public range

Headquarters

Brooklyn

United States

Founded

2013

13 years active

Status

Private

Non-Invasive Consumer EEG

Subsector

For subscribers

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Date	Stage	Amount	Valuation	Lead investors
Sep 29, 2021	Seed	$1.8M	—	BITKRAFT Ventures, re.Mind Capital

AI bull / bear

Bull case

OpenBCI owns the most valuable layer in the non-invasive BCI stack: the developer community. With over a decade of open-source hardware evolution from the 2013 Kickstarter through Cyton, Ganglion, and now Galea, they have achieved something rivals cannot buy — thousands of researchers, hobbyists, and academics who build on their platform by default. That installed base creates switching costs that proprietary competitors like NextMind or Kernel can't match. The Galea VR headset integration is strategically prescient: as Apple and Meta push spatial computing, the demand for multimodal biosensing input grows. OpenBCI's model — cheap, hackable boards (Ganglion at ~$500 vs. $30k research EEGs) — turns every university lab into a distribution channel and every developer into a recruiter. They don't need venture capital because their community does the evangelism for free. If the consumer BCI market ever materializes at scale, OpenBCI is the infrastructure layer everyone builds on.

Bear case

OpenBCI has no disclosed funding history and no clear path to becoming a commercial business rather than a hobbyist tool vendor. Open-source hardware is notoriously hard to monetize: margins are thin, clones are inevitable, and the people with the most influence over the roadmap pay nothing. The Galea headset is a clever prototype, but shipping integrated VR-biosensing hardware at consumer price points requires manufacturing scale and working capital that a bootstrapped Kickstarter alumni may not have. Meanwhile, well-funded entrants like Kernel ($100M+ raised) and NextMind (acquired by Snap) are pushing toward consumer-ready products with polished UX and clinical validation budgets. OpenBCI's developer-first ethos — raw signal data, soldering iron required — is a feature for PhDs and a dealbreaker for the mass market. If BCI goes mainstream, the winners will be the companies that invest in regulatory clearance, sales teams, and product design, not the ones that leave it to the community to figure out.

Generated by deepseek-v4-flash · June 2, 2026Refreshes quarterly · see disclosures

OpenBCI

At a glance

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Funding history

How they make money

Founder backgrounds

Conor Russomanno

Joel Murphy

AI bull / bear

In the news

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Leadership

Products

Cyton Biosensing Board

Galea

Ultracortex Mark IV

Open roles

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