BrainCo

Sector

Neurotech

Chinese name

强脑科技

Programme

Day 4 · 14 Oct 2026 · Hangzhou

BrainCo (强脑科技), based in Hangzhou, reads signals from the brain and muscles through sensors on the skin and turns them into movement, without surgery. The company makes bionic hands and legs, robotic hands for humanoid robots and headbands for focus and sleep. It is one of Hangzhou's Six Little Dragons and raised 2 billion yuan in January 2026, shortly before filing confidentially for a listing in Hong Kong. The delegation had BrainCo on its programme for day 4 of the China Business Mission 2026.

From a Harvard lab to Hangzhou

Founder Han Bicheng (韩璧丞) started BrainCo in 2015 as a doctoral student at Harvard, with support from the Harvard Innovation Labs. Its first product was a headband that measures attention through brainwaves (EEG). In 2017 the big money came from China, including from the state-owned China Electronics Corporation. In 2018 the headquarters moved to Hangzhou, while the office near Boston remained (Wikipedia). The company grew up within the ecosystem of Hangzhou, also home to Alibaba, DeepSeek and Unitree.

The early years drew criticism. In 2019 Chinese schools halted trials of headbands that measured pupils' attention, after parents raised privacy concerns. A year later the headband received a Big Brother Award in Germany. Meanwhile the focus shifted to bionics: in 2019 the bionic hand appeared on TIME magazine's list of best inventions, and in 2020 it went into production.

How can a machine read brain signals without surgery?

A brain-computer interface turns signals from the nervous system into commands for a machine. There are two routes. The invasive route, taken by Neuralink, places electrodes in the brain. That gives a sharp signal, but requires surgery and is still in clinical trials. From the start, BrainCo chose the non-invasive route: sensors on the skin. EEG measures brainwaves through the scalp, EMG measures muscle signals in the residual limb of an arm or leg.

That signal is much weaker and noisier. This is where the real work lies: AI models learn for each user which signal belongs to which movement, using dry electrodes that need no gel. In the bionic hand, each finger moves independently. Because no surgeon is involved, the product can be made and sold in large numbers.

From prosthesis to robotic hand

What a residual limb can control, a robot can control too. Small, strong and light motors, touch sensors and smart control are exactly what humanoid robots need. The Revo 2, unveiled in 2025, weighs 383 grams and grips with 50 newtons. According to Bloomberg, dozens of Chinese robot makers buy the five-fingered hands, including Unitree and Leju, and packages in China start at around 50,000 yuan (Startup Fortune).

The Revo 3 followed in April 2026, with 21 degrees of freedom, touch sensing across the whole palm down to 0.01 newtons and 33 grip types (eHangzhou). In July 2026, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, BrainCo showed a platform that lets an EEG headset control a humanoid robot, robotic arm or robot dog. From brain signal to command takes less than 200 milliseconds. The company also presented a data glove and a wheeled dual-arm platform to collect training data for robots (Robotics Tomorrow).

How big is BrainCo today?

BrainCo does not publish revenue or profit. KrASIA did report in August 2026 that, at the end of March, the company had more than 150,000 end users in more than 35 countries and regions, that nearly 30 per cent of its 2025 revenue came from abroad and that production capacity for the bionic hand stood at 100,000 units (KrASIA).

The 2 billion yuan round in January 2026 was led by IDG Capital and Walden International, with suppliers Lens Technology and OmniVision as strategic investors (Yicai). On 12 January BrainCo filed confidentially for a listing on the Hong Kong stock exchange, with CICC and UBS as sponsors (TechNode). In early November 2026 we found no public prospectus and no listing date. Fellow Hangzhou company Unitree has since gone public, in Shanghai on 19 August 2026.

What does BrainCo mean for Europe?

As far as is known, BrainCo has no European subsidiary. It works through partners, trade fairs and online sales, and showed its technology at events such as Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in 2025 (BrainCo). At the AI conference in Shanghai in July 2026, Alexander De Croo, now head of the UN Development Programme (UNDP), visited the stand.

Among the wider European public, BrainCo is best known for FocusCalm, a headband that trains focus and stress and has turned up in elite sport. In September 2025 the research outlet Hunterbrook and journalist Pablo Torre raised questions about what happens to athletes' brain data; the coverage named Charles Leclerc and Jannik Sinner (GrandPrix.com). These were questions and allegations, not established misuse. They do show what a European customer will look at. Three European rules weigh most:

• The Medical Device Regulation (MDR) decides whether a prosthesis may be sold and reimbursed.
• Under the GDPR, brainwaves quickly count as health data, with stricter rules for processing and transfers outside the EU.
• Since February 2025 the AI Act has banned AI that infers emotions at work and in education, except for medical or safety reasons.

Reading intentions is worth more than a hand

BrainCo's real asset is the ability to infer from a weak signal what someone wants to do. The same know-how drives a prosthesis, a robotic hand and a sleep device. That makes the company agile: when humanoid robots became a craze in China, the hand was ready. For Europe, the playing field shifts as a result. Established prosthetics makers such as Ottobock and Össur face a competitor that works at lower prices and draws volume from robotics. Rehabilitation centres, orthopaedic companies and robot integrators in Belgium would do well to follow BrainCo, with three questions on the table: what clinical evidence exists, where user data ends up and how the company meets European rules.