With €60 million, Newfund is betting on BrainTech to turn European research into a market.

A new segment of digital health is taking shape at the intersection of artificial intelligence and neuroscience. Still fragmented but rapidly accelerating, it is already attracting several billion euros in funding and remains largely dominated by the United States. In this context, Newfund is finalizing HEKA, a €60 million fund dedicated to BrainTech, with the ambition of transforming European scientific excellence into industrial assets capable of scaling globally.

BrainTech targets the core system: the brain itself. The convergence of technologies—artificial intelligence, advanced imaging, biomarkers, and simulation—now makes it possible to observe, model, and treat pathologies that were previously difficult to address. In this framework, AI is no longer an optimization tool but a central component of clinical decision-making.

In 2025, more than €4.2 billion was raised in this segment across Europe and the United States, with the majority concentrated across the Atlantic. Early 2026 continues this momentum, with a marked increase in committed capital. Brain-related technologies now represent a significant share of digital health investments, with AI integrated into a majority of innovations.

This geographic imbalance is the starting point of Newfund’s strategy. Europe has a strong academic foundation in neuroscience but struggles to convert its discoveries into leading companies. Due to a lack of suitable capital and market access, a significant portion of value is captured elsewhere. HEKA aims to invest in 25 European startups across neurology, psychiatry, and digital therapeutics, with the objective of supporting their expansion into the United States.

Newfund embraces this approach by anchoring it in a structural reality: the U.S. ecosystem concentrates the financing capacity, clinical infrastructure, and regulatory authorities. The fund leverages a presence in Palo Alto and a long-established network to accelerate access to the market, validation processes, and industrial partners.

This choice is not driven by geographic bias but by execution logic. In a sector where clinical validation, patient access, and speed of deployment determine value creation, the U.S. ecosystem remains a necessary gateway. Europe’s momentum, supported by the quality of its research, may emerge in the medium term, but it is not yet sufficient to independently sustain global growth trajectories.

The existing portfolio already illustrates this approach. Nine companies have been funded since 2023, covering the entire value chain. In diagnostics, Raidium, Nuréa, and Diagnoly develop automated medical imaging analysis solutions. In triage and clinical decision support, AI-Stroke leverages clinical signal analysis to guide emergency patient pathways. The fund also invests in therapeutic devices, such as Reev for post-stroke rehabilitation, and in digital therapeutics with Soihtu DTx for psychiatric disorders. Several investments are in biotech, including Inside Therapeutics and Oria Bioscience, which develop production or modeling platforms to accelerate drug discovery, while Moovd focuses on practitioner tooling.

A majority of these companies are already deployed in clinical environments, and several have obtained regulatory approvals in the United States. This early orientation toward the U.S. market confirms HEKA’s role as a translation vector—from European research to international industrial applications.

However, the size of the fund remains constrained relative to the sector’s needs. BrainTech combines the requirements of healthcare and deeptech: capital intensity, long development cycles, and dependence on clinical validation. In this context, €60 million serves more as a seed lever than a comprehensive financing tool. The strategy therefore relies on the ability to syndicate with other investors and to position portfolio companies on international funding trajectories.

Beyond the fund itself, HEKA reflects the emergence of a new asset class. As artificial intelligence integrates into the most complex medical processes, brain health is becoming a structured investment field, with its own metrics, regulatory constraints, and industrial dynamics. This trajectory echoes the early phases of applied AI or climate tech: a combination of scientific innovation, patient capital, and uncertainty around business models.

By specializing early in a still under-standardized category, Newfund is taking an offensive position, aiming to capture valuation asymmetries and build a differentiated portfolio. The bet is twofold: that BrainTech will establish itself as a major vertical within digital health, and that European startups will capture a meaningful share of the value.

A structural tension remains. By systematically organizing expansion through the United States, the model maximizes the chances of success for funded companies, but also reinforces the transfer of value خارج Europe.