Analysis
Precision Neuroscience closed an oversubscribed $250 million Series D, co-led by Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Inc. and the newly formed Ackman Oxman Institute, valuing the brain-computer interface company at just over $1 billion, according to BioSpace and The Next Web. Pershing Square and the Institute together put in $42.5 million of the round.
Founded in 2021 by neurosurgeon Benjamin Rapoport, an early member of Neuralink's founding team who left in 2018, and CEO Michael Mager, Precision has raised $430 million in total and built what it calls the largest clinical footprint in brain-computer interfaces to date, with more than 100 patient procedures completed across 18 medical institutions. The company's Layer 7 Cortical Interface is a thin, flexible electrode array that conforms to the brain's surface rather than penetrating tissue, and it received FDA clearance in April 2025 for up to 30 days of continuous use.
“John Donoghue, founder of the BrainGate consortium and a 2026 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering laureate, as a scientific advisor.”
The round is also the first investment for the Ackman Oxman Institute, a Manhattan brain-research center Ackman founded with his wife, architect and MIT professor Neri Oxman -- a personal as well as financial bet from one of the round's namesake backers. The rest of the syndicate is broad: Duquesne Family Office, B Capital, ARK Invest, Invus, Mubadala Capital, Mirae Asset Capital, Korea Investment Partners, Hitachi Ventures and JSL Health Capital all participated, alongside the addition of Dr. John Donoghue, founder of the BrainGate consortium and a 2026 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering laureate, as a scientific advisor.
Precision's non-penetrating design is its clearest point of differentiation against Elon Musk's Neuralink, which uses penetrating electrode threads, and against Synchron, which threads its Stentrode device through blood vessels rather than placing it directly on the brain's surface. Each approach trades off signal resolution against surgical risk and implant longevity differently, and none has yet demonstrated the kind of long-term, large-population outcomes data that would settle which architecture wins commercially.
What the valuation doesn't yet prove is a commercial product -- Precision's device remains under a 30-day FDA clearance rather than a permanent implant, and the company has not disclosed a timeline for seeking approval for longer or permanent use, the regulatory milestone that would actually open a durable revenue model rather than repeated short-duration procedures.