Funding profile · Neuroscience and end-of-life services

Nectome

A company whose only audited capital number is a federal grant. There is no Form D, no SEC registration of any kind, and no disclosed private round in eight years. What follows is what the public record actually contains.

$915,835NIMH awards on record, FY2016 to FY2017
$1.0MTotal raised at March 2018, company-reported to MIT Technology Review
$200K+Refundable waiting list deposits reported April 2018
0SEC filings of any type under this company

Data as of September 23, 2026. Company-reported figures are labeled.

Rounds at a glance

When Round Amount Source of funds Source
Feb 2016 BPF Small Mammal Prize $26,735 Brain Preservation Foundation, purse pledged by Saar Wilf Independent
FY2016 to FY2017 NIMH STTR, project R41MH112318 $915,835 National Institute of Mental Health NIH RePORTER
Winter 2018 Y Combinator batch $120,000 standard Y Combinator Independent
Mar 2018 BPF Large Mammal Prize $80,000 Brain Preservation Foundation Independent
By Mar 2018 All private sources to date about $1,000,000 Y Combinator plus undisclosed Company-stated
2018 Waiting list deposits, refundable more than $200,000 25 individuals at $10,000 each, later described as 30 Independent
Before Mar 2026 Investment after a witnessed demonstration Not disclosed Recommended by Andrew Critch, cofounder of the Survival and Flourishing Fund Company-stated
2026 Preservation pre-sales $100,000 full, $20,000 discount card Individual buyers Company-stated

What the filings show

Nothing. A search of SEC EDGAR by company name returns no matching companies, and a full text search for Nectome returns zero hits across all form types, as of September 23, 2026. There is no Form D, no Form C, no registration statement and no filing by any pooled vehicle naming the company. The entity has existed since 2015 and went through Y Combinator in Winter 2018.

That absence has ordinary explanations. A company that raises under Section 4(a)(2) rather than Regulation D files no Form D at all. Grant money and prize money are not securities. Refundable customer deposits are not securities either. None of that tells you how much equity capital has moved, and no public instrument does.

Reading the filings

  1. The grant is the only figure anyone can check.NIH RePORTER lists three NIMH awards to NECTOME, INC. under project R41MH112318, with Robert McIntyre as principal investigator: $413,765 in FY2016, then $456,444 plus a $45,626 supplement in FY2017. The sum is $915,835.
  2. Every published version of that grant number is wrong.MIT Technology Review and the BBC both reported $960,000, a figure $44,165 above the RePORTER total. Live Science reported more than $915,000, which is right. STAT reported $870,209, which is $45,626 below the total and equals the two base awards without the supplement. The discrepancy is the supplement, counted or not counted.
  3. About a third of the grant left the company immediately.MIT Technology Review reported that MIT was receiving approximately $300,000 under a subcontract. Against $915,835 that is 32.8 percent, which matches the same outlet’s description of about a third being spent in the Boyden lab. When MIT terminated on April 2, 2018, the company told Live Science the grant was in transition.
  4. Deposits were a demand test, not revenue.At $10,000 each, the more than $200,000 reported in April 2018 implies at least 21 depositors, against 25 reported in March 2018 and 30 described in January 2019. The money was refundable, was offered back after the MIT split, and by the founder’s 2019 account bought no promise of service.
  5. The 2026 price list is the first unit economics on the record.The founder wrote in March 2026 that it is “100k for a full pre-sale, or 20k for a discount card,” the card convertible to a free preservation after ten years and pro-rated before that. At $100,000 a unit, the entire 2018 deposit book would represent about two sales.
  6. The only 2020s capital event is described, not documented.The founder wrote that Andrew Critch, a Survival and Flourishing Fund cofounder, personally witnessed a rat preservation and then recommended an investment the company has since received. No amount, no investor of record, no filing.

Commercial signals

Signal Detail Source type
Regulatory No FDA submission, no registered trial. The activity is body donation for research under a state assisted dying statute. Public record
Evidence Cryobiology 2015 method paper. Brain Preservation Foundation prizes 2016 and 2018. bioRxiv preprint Mar 4, 2026, not yet peer reviewed. Public record
Customers Pre-sales offered at $100,000 and $20,000. No count published. No revenue figure published. Company-stated
Location Portland, Oregon as of 2026, chosen for the state Death with Dignity Act. Previously South San Francisco. Independent
Institutional partners MIT subcontract terminated Apr 2018. No replacement academic partner named since. Public record
Headcount Three employees named on the 2026 preprint. STAT counted three in January 2019. Public record

What to watch

  • A first Form D. Any priced round sold under Regulation D triggers one within 15 days of first sale.
  • Whether the Survival and Flourishing Fund or Andrew Critch is ever named as an investor on the record.
  • Any disclosure of pre-sale units sold, which is the only path to a revenue number for this business.
  • Whether the March 2026 preprint clears peer review, which is the gating event for institutional capital.
  • Any further federal award. The NIMH line has been dormant since FY2017.

The Nectome story on Healthcare DiscoveryHealthcare Discovery

Related companies

  • Exin Therapeutics: Also in Therapeutics. Three Oxford neuroscientists building circuit level gene therapies for epilepsy, guided by AI models trained on mouse brain recordings
  • Origami Therapeutics: Also in Therapeutics. A small San Diego company designing oral pills that strip the mutant huntingtin protein out of brain cells while leaving the normal protein alone
  • Kopra Bio: Also in Therapeutics. A UCSF spinout engineering a virus that turns brain tumor cells into local factories for an immune-stimulating protein
  • Reverie Labs: Also in Therapeutics. A Cambridge company that used machine learning to design brain penetrant kinase inhibitors for cancer

Sources

  1. Public recordNIH RePORTER, project R41MH112318, three NIMH awards to Nectome, Inc.NIH · FY2016 to FY2017
  2. Public recordSEC EDGAR company search and full text search for Nectome, no resultsSEC · accessed Sep 23, 2026
  3. Public recordStatement regarding the relationship between the MIT Media Lab and NectomeMIT Media Lab · Apr 2, 2018
  4. Public recordUltrastructural preservation of a whole large mammal brainbioRxiv preprint · Mar 4, 2026
  5. IndependentA startup is pitching a mind-uploading service that is 100 percent fatalMIT Technology Review, Antonio Regalado · Mar 13, 2018
  6. IndependentMIT severs ties to company promoting fatal brain uploadingMIT Technology Review, Antonio Regalado · Apr 3, 2018
  7. IndependentBrain back-up firm Nectome loses link to MITBBC News · Apr 4, 2018
  8. IndependentBrain-Uploading Company Has No Immediate Plans to Upload BrainsLive Science, Rafi Letzter · Apr 3, 2018
  9. IndependentAfter ghoulish allegations, a brain-preservation company seeks redemptionSTAT, Sharon Begley · Jan 30, 2019
  10. IndependentScientists might have found a way to keep our brains going for hundreds of yearsMetro, Josh Milton · Apr 12, 2026
  11. IndependentLarge and Small Mammal Brain Preservation Prize announcementsBrain Preservation Foundation · 2016 and 2018
  12. CompanyNullius in Verba: 3rd party evidence for Nectome’s brain preservation, and author commentsLessWrong, Aurelia Song · Mar 20, 2026
  13. CompanyNectome home page and Our Process pagenectome.com · accessed Sep 23, 2026

Compiled from SEC, NIH and other public records and published reports as of September 23, 2026. Form D notices report offerings under Regulation D; no such notice exists for this company, and the absence of a filing is not evidence that no capital was raised. Healthcare Venture Capital Fund holds no position in Nectome. This page is not an offer to sell or a recommendation to buy any security.