StairMed

Shanghai StairMed Technology was founded in 2021 by Li Xue and is based in Shanghai. It develops minimally invasive implantable brain-machine interfaces and makes the parts in-house: ultra-flexible electrodes about a hundredth the width of a human hair, a wireless implant, decoding algorithms and a surgical robot that places the electrodes. After three clinical implants of its system in 2025, its 256-channel wireless WRS02 system entered China's device-registration process with an implant in early 2026. StairMed also develops a closed-loop deep brain stimulation system, implanted in four patients in clinical research by April 2026, with formal trials planned for 2027 in Parkinson's disease and epilepsy. Its website also lists research hardware, including its HNE electrode and StairPlex neural signal acquisition system. In February 2025 it raised a RMB 350 million (about $48 million) Series B, and on April 2, 2026 it closed a RMB 500 million strategic round led by Alibaba, with Tencent returning, which took its funding over the preceding 12 months above RMB 1.1 billion.