Par Equity has led a £1.9m pre-seed investment into a Scottish university spinout developing a magnetic sensor with use cases in health and the metaverse.
Spun out of the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, Neuranics has created a sensor that is capable of identifying “tiny magnetic signals from organs of the body” such as muscles in the arm or the heart.
Neuranics’ spintronics sensors could replace commonly used electrocardiography (ECG) sensors, which are sticky patches with wires attached to the body to record the heart’s electric signals.
“Rarely do we discover both a transformational technology and such a well-rounded team, with whom we can partner over the long-term to create a company capable of radically improving a broad range of use cases in a number of industry verticals,” said Robert Higginson, partner at Par Equity.
Neuranics was founded by CTO and University of Glasgow professor of nanoelectronics Hadi Heidari, lead engineer Dr Siming Zuo, along with digital health professor at the University of Edinburgh and company CSO Kia Nazarpour.
The magnetic sensor startup’s round also attracted the University of Glasgow, Old College Capital, the University of Edinburgh and the Creator Fund.
“Modern hardware represents a significant bottleneck for the wide-scale development of brain-machine technologies,” said Creator Fund’s director of operations Alexandra Ntemourtsidou.
“Currently, there’s no practical non-invasive solution that can smoothly transition from lab or clinical settings to power AI systems.”