Toronto’s InteraXon Raises $6 Million For Brain Monitor Headband

Toronto-based InteraXon has raised a $6 million Series A round of funding led by First Financial Equity Corporation, with participation from Hong Kong-based Horizon Ventures, OMERS Ventures, A-List Ventures (aka. Ashton Kutcher’s investment company), and several others.

InteraXon’s eyebrow raising Muse headband, which sports six sensors that monitor a wearer’s brain waves, managed to raise over $300,000 earlier this year on the Indiegogo crowdfunding platform, and is scheduled to ship in early 2014.

The company plans to incorporate the headband in its Brain Health System, a platform designed to exercise a user’s cognitive skills. Until September 3, $199 will snag you a headband, the Brain Health System and an SDK, through which the company hopes to let software developers come up with unanticipated applications for the device, with the price set to rise after the early bird deadline.

While the headband has lots of potential for health and brain fitness applications and already interacts with mobile devices, make no mistake. InteraXon’s stated goal is to let you control computers with your mind: furniture, cars, home stereos, TVs, appliances, video games, etc. The Muse also seems a natural complement to other forms of wearable computing.

In a recent interview, CEO Ariel Garten admitted that the device also attracts attention from the “quantified self” crowd, as well as “people with ‘tin foil hats.’ The people who believe that in some way the government is reading their brain and hoping we can save them from it.”

InteraXon plans to use the money to hire more staff, improve their software, and build more devices.