Gazprombank invested 33 million rubles in a brain research startup using quantum sensors

The total investment in the project since its inception in 2016 exceeded one million dollars (51.2 million rubles at the exchange rate of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation as of June 30, 2022).

In 2021, QLU, together with scientists from the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology and the Higher School of Economics, demonstrated the operation of the world's first ultrasensitive solid-state magnetometer operating at room temperature during a study of the electromagnetic activity of the brain: magnetoencephalography. (MEG).

A sensor based on yttrium iron garnet film was able to record weak electrical sources deep within the brain.

The investments will be used to expand the previously developed system and create a laboratory prototype of an ultrasensitive magnetoencephalograph, a helmet-shaped device containing 5 to 10 ultrasensitive magnetometers.

Magnetoencephalographs are used to study epilepsy, brain tumors, pain perception, and other neurological problems. In 2020, the global magnetoencephalography market was estimated at $252 million.

According to the founder and CEO of QLU Maxim Oysters, in the future, the startup plans to launch a completely local production: “All key development nodes are already being made in Russia.

The QLU project was spun off into a separate company in 2016 and initially appeared in the Russian Quantum Center. Until 2022, the startup was known as M-Granat.