Beacon Biosignals, known for its sleep monitoring system, hauled in $86 million as part of an oversubscribed series B funding round that will be used to develop a new neurodiagnostic data set.
The fundraising is part of the company’s efforts to advance the clinical applications of artificial-intelligence-driven biomarkers for brain health by using Beacon’s FDA-cleared Waveband, which measures the brain’s electrical activity while the user is asleep and awake, as well as through its Beacon Platform.
Data collected by the Waveband track brain function across diverse populations and add to Beacon’s foundation model of brain activity along with millions of hours of EEG recordings to help detect early disease signatures and potentially predict responses to therapy.
“Our mission is to make brain function measurable and actionable at scale,” Jacob Donoghue, M.D., Ph.D., Beacon's co-founder and CEO, said in a statement. “By training AI on millions of hours of real-world brain data, we’re beginning to map the signals of health and disease in ways that can accelerate drug development and ultimately improve how patients are diagnosed and treated.”
The goal is to explore diagnostic pathways into conditions such as clinical depression, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and sleep apnea.
Backers of the series B round included Innoviva, Google Ventures (GV), Nexus NeuroTech Ventures, S32, Catalio Capital Management and Takeda. Also participating were General Catalyst, Logos Capital, Casdin Capital and Indicator Ventures. To date, Beacon has raised more than $121 million in funding.
In April, Beacon acquired home sleep testing technology specialist CleveMed for an undisclosed price.