In a 2023 Asian Para Games opening ceremony in Hangzhou, an athlete with an upper-arm amputation lifted a torch and used a prosthetic hand — controlled by intention alone — to light the flame. The hand came from BrainCo (强脑科技), a Hangzhou company whose founder had spent nearly a decade arguing that the future of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) would not be implanted chips, but wearable sensors.
Han Bicheng (韩璧丞) is not a household name outside China's tech circle, but he is one of the few BCI founders with both a research pedigree and shipped, certified products.
From a Harvard lab to Hangzhou
Han was born in 1987 in Mudanjiang, Heilongjiang. He earned a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) and then pursued a doctorate in neuroscience at Harvard, where he studied inside the university's brain-science center.
He founded BrainCo in 2014 in Boston and formalized the team through Harvard's innovation lab in 2015. In 2018, a delegation from Hangzhou recruited the team back to China, settling the company in the city's future-science precinct. BrainCo is regularly grouped with Hangzhou's cohort of high-profile startups.
The non-invasive conviction
BCI splits roughly into three routes: invasive (electrodes implanted in the brain, the Neuralink path), semi-invasive, and non-invasive (sensors on the scalp or body). Han chose non-invasive deliberately.
His recurring analogy: the neural signal is about ±50 microvolts — a millionth of a AA battery — and reading it cleanly is "like picking up the sound of a mosquito flapping its wings 50 kilometers away." BrainCo's core product is what he calls a "super sensor" that captures those faint nerve signals and decodes them with AI into control commands.
The trade-off is real. Invasive approaches get cleaner signals but require surgery, carry infection risk, and cost far more. Non-invasive avoids the operating room but fights noise and weak signals. Han's bet is that the mass market — and most patients — sit on the non-invasive side.
From lab to limb
The flagship product is an intelligent prosthetic hand:
- Mass-produced from 2020, it was described by Chinese state media as the world's first brain-controlled smart prosthetic to reach volume production.
- It received U.S. FDA clearance in 2022, according to multiple Chinese reports.
- By 2022, BrainCo said it had crossed 100,000 units of high-precision BCI product manufactured.
The hand lets an above-elbow or hand amputee move individual fingers by intention. State-media coverage cites users regaining the ability to write, cook, and live independently. BrainCo says its products are placed in more than 400 hospitals and rehabilitation centers across China, and that Zhejiang province has begun covering non-invasive BCI adaptation fees under basic medical insurance.
Scale and recognition
Financing is the part to handle carefully. People's Daily and other Chinese outlets report BrainCo raised more than US$200 million, with a 2022 round making it, alongside Neuralink, one of the best-funded BCI companies globally. Han was named a 2022 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.
What is not solidly verified in the sources I reviewed is a precise current valuation; one secondary outlet cited a 2024 Hurun unicorn valuation around RMB 8.5 billion (≈ US$1.2 billion), but that figure rests on a single list and should be treated as indicative, not confirmed.
Why this is a China-AI story
BrainCo sits at the intersection the site tracks: neuroscience, AI decoding, and rehabilitation robotics. Its non-invasive route also maps onto China's policy push to put BCI among future industries, while sidestepping the surgical-risk debate that dominates invasive coverage.
Beyond the hand: a product range
BrainCo did not stop at prosthetics. State-media coverage describes a consumer line built on the same signal-reading core:
- FocusZen (脑环) — a headband that monitors brainwave state to help users relax and de-stress.
- Easleep (安睡仪) — a device intended to help users fall asleep faster through neuro-modulation.
- Rehabilitation and training systems for gait and balance.
These consumer products, the coverage says, entered offline retail and reached an overseas revenue share around 30%, with medical-device certifications in multiple countries — the kind of "China tech going out" detail that sounds impressive but, here, rests on company-supplied figures rather than independent audit.
BrainCo is also regularly named among Hangzhou's standout startups, the kind of local-ecosystem backing (talent, policy, and patient capital) that helped it survive the long gap between a 2015 founding and a shippable, certified product in 2020–2022.
The harder truth about non-invasive
Han is candid that non-invasive BCI is the more crowded, noisier problem. Invasive implants get the headlines and the cleanest signals; non-invasive must fight the skull, hair, sweat, and motion. BrainCo's claim of medical-grade decoding accuracy "above 95%" is a self-reported bar, not something I could benchmark here. The real test is not a demo but sustained, comfortable wear by a child or an elderly user in a non-lab setting — exactly where many BCI promises have quietly died.
Honest limitations
This profile draws on Chinese state media (Xinhua, People's Daily) and financial press (Securities Times); it is not based on a direct interview. Product counts (100,000 units), FDA timing (2022), and funding (US$200M+) come from Chinese reporting rather than a primary regulatory filing I could access here. The "world's first" and "only" claims are the company's or its coverage's, not independently benchmarked in this review. I did not verify overseas revenue share or current product certifications beyond the reported FDA clearance.
What readers can do now
- Distinguish invasive vs non-invasive when reading any BCI claim — BrainCo's entire thesis depends on that line, and the clinical and regulatory bars are very different.
- Look for named, current regulatory clearances (FDA, China's NMPA) rather than "first / only" marketing language before judging maturity.
- If comparing BCI ventures, separate demo videos from deployed, insured, hospital-used products — BrainCo's hospital coverage and insurance inclusion are the stronger signals to verify.