Ceribell

Jane Chao, PhD, is the CEO and co-founder. She holds a doctorate in neuroscience from UCLA and previously worked as a research scientist at Stanford University before founding the company. Her background anchors the firm's product development in clinical electrophysiology, with the engineering team reporting into a device-and-AI roadmap she oversees directly.

It is a hybrid. Hospitals purchase the Ceribell recorder as a capital-equipment buy, then consume disposable single-use headbands and a subscription-based AI interpretation algorithm on a recurring basis. The AI's recurring software revenue and the razor-and-blade disposable model produce a blended revenue stream that differs from a pure SaaS company or a one-time device manufacturer.

Conventional EEG machines require a specially trained technologist to apply 21 electrodes to the scalp, a process that can take over an hour and is frequently unavailable during nights and weekends. Ceribell reduces setup to roughly five minutes by using a simplified 10-electrode headband that any nurse or emergency physician can place, and its AI triage algorithm immediately alerts for seizure activity without waiting for a neurologist to read the recording.

Ceribell reports deployment in over 400 hospitals across the United States, primarily focusing on academic medical centers, large integrated delivery networks, and community hospital emergency departments. Procurement typically routes through hospital neurology or emergency department administrators evaluating length-of-stay reduction and triage metrics.

Ceribell holds FDA 510(k) clearances for its EEG system. The original clearance covered seizure detection in adults, and in March 2025 the agency cleared an expanded seizure-burden monitoring indication that lets clinicians track seizure activity trends in response to treatment over hours or days, shifting the utility from a binary diagnostic to a longitudinal management tool (per the firm, March 2025).

Known investors include Longitude Capital, The Rise Fund (TPG's impact investing platform), and Ally Bridge Group. These firms participated in rounds that collectively raised over $200 million, reflecting a syndicate weighted toward medtech growth equity rather than early-stage software VC.

The AI is trained and validated on Ceribell's own electrophysiology dataset — over 1.1 million hours of EEG recordings annotated by clinical neurophysiologists. This dataset is specific to acute-care EEG patterns and seizures, meaning the model is purpose-built for triage rather than fine-tuned from a general-purpose foundation model, creating a narrow but defensible clinical-data moat.