Hemispheric Raises $52 Million to Develop AI Model for Interpreting Brain Activity

Hemispheric announced Wednesday that it raised $52 million across three funding rounds to advance an artificial intelligence model that deciphers brain activity, Haaretz reported. The company has operated for more than six years under the radar while building the system. CEO Hagai Lalazar, a brain researcher and serial developer, leads the firm alongside Chief Technology Officer Gidi Littwin.

Littwin founded RealFace, an AI software company Apple acquired in 2017, and co-holds a patent for a key component in Apple's Face ID system. The two executives met seven years ago as Littwin prepared to leave Apple. Hemispheric employs 112 people across brain science, artificial intelligence, software engineering, electronics and medical systems.

It established labs in Israel, the United States and the Philippines beginning in 2019. Volunteers there don a light helmet for a 15-minute electroencephalogram that records brain activity. The company has collected more than 250,000 hours of EEG data from over 100,000 participants, obtaining records from more than 1,000 people a week at peak.

Its model, called Descartes, was trained on 6 billion parameters. According to Hemispheric, the results can assist diagnosis of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, Parkinson's disease and early cognitive deterioration. The firm already sells its knowhow to drug companies for use in their research.

Lalazar said the brain causes the most morbidity yet lacks noninvasive technological diagnostics. Littwin noted that the EEG has existed for a century but produces waves difficult to interpret because no two brains are the same. After regulatory approval, the company hopes the model will reach doctors' clinics for five- to ten-minute patient tests.