Early Investor of Unitree Bets on a Brain-Computer Interface Company
"Wabo Technologies, a brain-computer interface (BCI) startup, has secured new funding from Vertex Ventures (under Temasek), Hongtai Fund, Chengdu Future Industry Fund, and Huifengda Capital. Vertex Ventures is known for its early bet on Unitree Robotics.
Inspired by the sci-fi film "Avatar," founder Zhang Xingzhi has pursued human-machine interaction for over a decade. He established Wabo in late 2025, coinciding with China's push for BCI as a future industry. Unlike companies focused solely on medical hardware, Wabo positions itself as a model company. Its core mission is to develop a "Human Neural Intent Model" that decodes EEG, EMG, and behavioral signals to understand a user's goals, confirmations, corrections, and stop intentions before physical action, translating them into standardized control signals for machines, robots, or smart devices.
The young, full-stack team, backed by academic collaborators from Tianjin University and Fudan University, quickly attracted investors. The company had previously raised a seed round from Ceyuan Capital. Investors were impressed by Wabo's systematic capabilities in data collection, signal processing, and engineering, seeing potential beyond a single hardware product toward a reusable layer of human intent interpretation. Applications span medical rehabilitation, smart homes, embodied AI, and even space exploration, with Wabo partnering with Tianjin University on pioneering "space BCI" research.
Wabo plans a dual-headquarters strategy, with Shanghai focusing on high-end R&D and model development, and Chengdu handling hardware, product development, and supply chain. The BCI sector in China is heating up, with over 30 financing deals in early 2026. Zhang believes future competition will center on who can build a sustainable data-model-scenario loop. He predicts industry consolidation within three years, with only companies that master this闭环 surviving. The vision from "Avatar" is inching closer to reality."
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