- Precision Neuroscience closed a $250 million Series D led by Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square.
- The round takes its total funding to $430 million since launching in 2021.
- Precision has now tested its Layer 7 implant on 100+ patients across 18 hospitals.
A brain implant that never actually penetrates the brain sounds like a contradiction. It’s also the pitch that just persuaded one of Wall Street’s most vocal activist investors to write a rare private check.
Precision Neuroscience, the medical device startup founded by a Neuralink alumnus, has closed an oversubscribed $250 million Series D. The round was co-led by Ackman’s Pershing Square Inc., the Ackman Oxman Institute (which Ackman co-founded with his wife, architect Neri Oxman, and which is making its first investment here) and an undisclosed life sciences fund.
“The next phase of BCI will be defined by more than technology alone. We have built the clinical network, regulatory position, and manufacturing base that leadership in this field requires,” said Michael Mager, Precision’s co-founder and chief executive.
Why the surface matters
New York-based Precision was founded in 2021 by Mager, a private-equity investor, and Benjamin Rapoport, a neurosurgeon who spent a year on Neuralink’s eight-person founding team before leaving to build something less invasive.
Where Elon Musk’s company threads electrodes directly into brain tissue, Precision’s Layer 7 Cortical Interface is a film thinner than a human hair that rests on the brain’s surface, sliding in through a slit in the skull less than a millimetre wide.
The company says that makes the implant reversible, a distinction regulators have rewarded so far: Layer 7 has FDA clearance for up to 30 days of use, and Precision has now run more than 100 procedures across 18 medical institutions, including Mount Sinai and Penn Medicine.
A crowded race to read the brain
Precision isn’t alone chasing this.
Neuralink raised $600 million at a $9 billion valuation last year and continues to implant electrodes into the cortex itself. Synchron, which threads its Stentrode device into the brain through a blood vessel rather than an incision, raised $200 million in a Series D led by Double Point Ventures in November 2025, taking its own total to $345 million. Science Corporation, founded by yet another Neuralink alumnus, closed a $230 million Series C in March 2026 to commercialise a retinal implant aimed at restoring vision, valuing it at $1.5 billion.
Precision believes on a middle path: less invasive than Neuralink, higher-resolution than an endovascular approach, and, with Medtronic as a commercial partner and its own microelectronics factory in Texas, closer to a manufacturing operation than a lab.
The money and what comes next
The round, joined by Duquesne Family Office, ARK Invest, B Capital, Invus, Mubadala Capital, Mirae Asset Capital, Korea Investment Partners, Hitachi Ventures, and JSL Health Capital, takes Precision’s total raised to $430 million. The deal values the company at just over $1 billion, with Pershing Square and the Institute contributing $42.5 million of it.
Precision says the cash will fund its clinical program, push Layer 7 through further FDA review, and build out commercial infrastructure. Ackman framed the vision in long-term terms: “We have learned that the brain can recover from even catastrophic injury, and that there is far more that can be done for people living with neurological injuries. Precision has the team, technology, and ambition to be a leader in BCI, and we are therefore delighted to invest in the company.”
None of this round answers the question that actually decides who wins this category: can any of these companies get a permanent, fully implantable device through the FDA, and will patients want one sitting on their brain for years rather than weeks. Mager himself has said that could take years. For now, the biggest checks in the category are saying the answer is yes.
