Openwater Prepares to Build Developer Kits

Openwater is a healthcare company that is revolutionizing and minitiarizing the way we read and write our body and brain. After demonstrating a prototype working system at TED, Openwater announced today that it is ramping up to build developer kits.

Openwater’s technology coalesces and leverages three keys: first, that red & near-infrared light (both benign) penetrates our bodies and brains; second, that holography can filter and descatter that light; and third, that Moore’s Law improvements in silicon manufacturing enable its inventions, that both record holograms and scan the body, to be realized at scale.

“We have proved the bases of the physics in our lab prototypes over the last year, and we’ve invented the chip architectures to speed this up and shrink it down to portable forms,” said Dr. Mary Lou Jepsen, CEO and founder of Openwater. “These should enable new generations of non-invasive diagnoses and treatments, and even brain-to-computer communications without cracking open our skulls.”

Seed financing to build the prototype was led by Excel Venture Management and a group of distinguished technology investors including Brook Byers, Esther Dyson, Gary Lauder, Howard Morgan, and Nicholas Negroponte, and the musician / human rights activist Peter Gabriel.  The company also announced that Jeff Huber, founding chairman and CEO of Grail, Inc., and former Google Senior Vice President, has joined Openwater’s board, alongside Juan Enriquez, Managing Director at Excel Venture Management and Dr. Jepsen.

“Mary Lou is a light magician, able to bend photons to image and begin to understand the most fundamental processes occurring within our brain,” said Juan Enriquez; “Over the next two years Openwater will likely create extraordinary opportunities to improve health care, and to build extraordinary brain interfaces.”

Funds from the current raise will be used to miniaturize the prototype and scale manufacturing.