Brain-Computer Interface Startup SiClink Raises Millions for Visual Reconstruction Technology

SiClink, an invasive brain-computer interface startup, has closed consecutive seed and angel funding rounds worth millions of yuan, backed by BlueRun Ventures, Hillhouse, and Zhongke Shenguang. The company is pursuing what it calls visual reconstruction, a bidirectional BCI system that both reads and writes visual information to the brain, marking a significant step beyond the current industry focus on motor control and unidirectional neural stimulation. Founded in December 2025, SiClink takes its name from silicon-carbon connection, reflecting its mission to bridge silicon-based technology with carbon-based biological systems. The company argues that the BCI industry's next frontier is not simply more accurate neural signal reading, but establishing a high-bandwidth, low-latency, long-term stable information interface between the brain and external devices. This vision positions BCI not merely as a medical device for restoring lost functions, but as a potential future information infrastructure. Visual reconstruction differs fundamentally from traditional vision restoration, which is largely a unidirectional process where an external camera captures images and stimulates the visual pathway. SiClink's approach requires a closed loop: the system must simultaneously decode what a user is seeing and encode virtual information back into the visual cortex, all while calibrating in near real-time. This bidirectional requirement presents challenges including neural representation drift, safe stimulation thresholds, and maintaining stability over years of use. Founder Dr. He Fei brings over a decade of BCI research experience. From 2016 to 2021, he worked at the University of Texas at Austin and Rice University on ultra-flexible neural interface research, with publications in high-biocompatibility electrode materials, low-threshold neural stimulation, and high-dynamic visual decoding. These achievements provide the technical foundation for SiClink's approach. The company's core thesis is that if a system can achieve stable interaction through the visual channel, the most bandwidth-intensive sensory modality, the underlying capabilities will transfer to broader applications in neural modulation and human augmentation, potentially transitioning BCI from a medical device paradigm to a general-purpose information interaction platform.