Social media giant Snap has bought NextMind, a Paris-based neuro-tech company that builds mind-controlled headbands, for an undisclosed amount.
The Santa Monica-based company said Wednesday that NextMind will bolster its augmented reality (AR) research. The NextMind team, which will remain in Paris, will work with Snap’s hardware research arm, Snap Lab, which develops AR technologies like Snap’s Spectacles glasses.
“NextMind has joined Snap to help drive long-term augmented reality research efforts within Snap Lab,” Snap said in an announcement. “Spectacles are an evolving, iterative research and development project, and the latest generation is designed to support developers as they explore the technical bounds of augmented reality.”
Founded in 2017, NextMind has 19 employees and has raised roughly $4.5 million at a nearly $13 million valuation, according to PitchBook data. The company designs hardware that reads electronic signals from the brain to control images on a computer.
“This technology monitors neural activity to understand your intent when interacting with a computing interface, allowing you to push a virtual button simply by focusing on it,’” Snap said in its statement.
The social media giant was keen to clarify that it is the human mind that controls NextMind’s technology, and not the other way around. “This technology does not ‘read’ thoughts or send any signals towards the brain,” the statement added.
The acquisition feeds into Snap’s broader AR ambitions to overlay the world with digital objects. In addition to Spectacles and its Snapchat camera app, the company recently launched a tool to let creators attach AR experiences to physical locations and has used an augmented reality feature to let people virtually try on clothes.
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