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Cap that promises to read minds with AI attracts US$ 50 million in investment. Startup Sabi wants to turn brain signals into commands for digital assistants; prototype will be presented at CES 2027. No wires or surgeries: startup Sabi raises US$ 50 million to develop technology capable of turning intentional thoughts into commands for AI (X/Reproduction) Artificial intelligence and technology reporter Published on October 14, 2026, at 3:01 p.m. Giving an order to an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant without speaking, typing, or touching a screen is the proposal of Sabi, an American startup that raised US$ 50 million to develop caps and beanies capable of interpreting brain signals. The round, announced last week, was led by Khosla Ventures, of investor Vinod Khosla. The accessory is still under development and the company intends to present a prototype at CES, the technology trade show taking place in January 2027 in Las Vegas. The phrase "read minds" sums up the project's ambition to turn words intentionally imagined by the user into digital commands. According to Forbes, which spoke with a person familiar with the negotiation, the investment valued Sabi at US$ 600 million. Accel, Initialized Capital, and DST Global are among the participants in the round. How the cap intends to turn thought into command. The Sabi Cap combines sensors with an AI model trained to relate brain activity to words and intentions. On the company's website, its operation is divided into three stages: capturing the signals, gathering data for training, and using the model to interpret the patterns found. The technology uses electroencephalography, or EEG, which records the brain's electrical activity. According to Sabi, its sensors can capture signals through hair, without gel or surgery. A model trained with more than 100,000 hours of neural recordings processes this information. The company is developing functions such as converting imagined speech into text and turning trained mental commands into requests for an AI. The goal is to create a new form of interaction with computers, wirelessly connected to a phone or PC. The proposal is part of the field of brain-computer interfaces, also explored by Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain implant company. At Sabi, the commercial bet is on a device that can be put on and taken off like a piece of clothing. What has already been tested - and what is still a promise. In an interview with Forbes, Rahul Chhabra, CEO and co-founder of Sabi, said that a laboratory prototype, similar to a wired helmet, achieved up to 77% accuracy in transcribing thoughts in users after more than two weeks of use. But there is an important physical obstacle. According to WIRED, signals captured externally pass through skin and bone and reach the sensors weakened. In addition, brain patterns vary from person to person. Recognizing a limited set of commands is a different task from continuously tracking natural language. The connection between brain activity and digital tools already appears in assistive applications. Bradford Smith, a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) who received a Neuralink implant, uses the computer and turns to Grok to help him formulate responses. This type of use also requires distinguishing the captured signal from the AI's contribution in constructing the message. Sabi will use the investment to expand its database, complete the chip, and manufacture the first devices. The 2027 presentation will be an opportunity to show how much of the proposal can already leave the laboratory environment. Frequently asked questions. Is the Sabi cap already on sale? Is it necessary to implant a chip in the brain? Can the device uncover any thought?

Sabi raises $50 million for a cap meant to read your thoughts. Typing is tedious and talking to your phone on the subway is awkward, so the next step is apparently just thinking: The Silicon Valley start-up Sabi is building a baseball cap that is supposed to turn brain signals into text and commands for A.I. assistants. Sabi has just raised a $50 million (about €45 million) seed round led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Accel, Initialized Capital, DST Global, Collaborative Fund, Ascend and Kevin Weil, OpenAI's former chief product officer. EEG without gel or surgery. Technically, Sabi relies on electroencephalography, or EEG, which measures the brain's electrical activity. Conventional EEG caps need conductive gel and sit tightly on the scalp. Sabi's sensors are designed to measure without contact, through hair, across a gap of up to five millimeters. Each sensor is one to five millimeters in size, and according to Forbes, up to 100,000 of them could fit into a single cap. Sabi has also designed its own EEG chip, which it says was more than 50 times as power-efficient as a widely used Texas Instruments component in internal tests. The cap connects wirelessly to a phone or laptop, much like earbuds. The heavy lifting is done by an A.I. model. Sabi is training what it calls a Brain Foundation Model on more than 100,000 hours of EEG recordings from participants imagining words or performing mental tasks, which the start-up says is the largest disclosed dataset of its kind. The cap is meant to do three things: put imagined words on screen as text, pass trained mental commands to A.I. assistants and predict which keys a user is about to press. "We are building a faster interface that does not require surgery or a laboratory," said Rahul Chhabra, Sabi's chief executive and co-founder. First demo at CES. Mr. Chhabra founded Sabi with Atmadeep Banerjee, the chief technology officer, who co-authored MindEye, a study that reconstructed images people had viewed from non-invasive brain scans. The team includes alumni of Kernel, Apple, Microsoft, Meta and Nike. Sabi plans to show a first prototype at the CES electronics show in Las Vegas in January and is preparing devices for people on its waitlist. It has not announced a price. Brain data is supposed to be encrypted at the sensor and processed while still encrypted, so that servers never see the raw signals. The race for the brain. Sabi is not alone. Elon Musk's Neuralink relies on implants and was valued at $9 billion (about €8 billion) last year, while OpenAI's chief executive, Sam Altman, has backed Merge Labs as a Neuralink rival. Meta already sells a wristband that reads muscle signals and is researching brain-to-text systems. That very research shows how high the bar is for Sabi. In a Meta study with 35 participants, the error rate for decoding typed characters from EEG signals averaged 67 percent, meaning two out of three characters were wrong. Magnetoencephalography, or MEG, did much better at 32 percent but requires a room-size scanner. The study used conventional EEG directly on the scalp, while Sabi wants to measure through hair. There are no independent accuracy measurements for the Sabi cap so far. Founders Dispatch Europe's Startup Scene, Twice a Week in Your Inbox. Deals, funding rounds and tech trends, curated by the Trending Topics newsroom. Free since 2015. Aus Datenschutz-Gründen ist dieser Inhalt ausgeblendet. Die Einbettung von externen Inhalten kann in den Datenschutz-Einstellungen aktiviert werden: