Janus Labs raises $1.8M pre-seed for contactless neural AI reading pets' brains
What's the deal? Janus Labs AI has closed a $1.8 million pre-seed round led by New York Angels, with participation from Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater New York, SkyRiver VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Kinisis VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. The funding brings the company's total raised to $2.6 million.
What's the endgame? Janus is building a new category of personalised health for dogs and cats. Its patented contactless Neuro AI technology measures brain activity, then combines it with physiological data to flag early health changes and recommend care.
Unlike GPS trackers or periodic diagnostics, Janus aims to capture a new layer of neural health information. Its longer-term vision is to bridge the interspecies communication gap, with potential applications extending to infant health monitoring.
What they're saying: "We're not interested in building another pet tracker," said co-founder and chief executive officer Shaun Westbrook. He said the technology offers "the closest thing to being able to have a conversation with your pet."
Investor Andreas Panayi, co-founder of Kinisis Ventures, said Janus is "going after something genuinely different in a pet-tech market that has grown crowded with activity trackers." He added that the firm backs founders "willing to build the hard, unproven layer of a category rather than the easy, overcrowded, and predictable one."
By the numbers: Janus holds nine US patents and five published human studies, with clinical validation across multiple dog breeds. It completed the 2026 SOSV NY/IndieBio accelerator and won Best Product at The Ventures Startup Awards during NY Tech Week 2026.
What could go wrong? The concept remains speculative. Combining contactless brain-signal sensing with other health data to infer pets' wellbeing will need validation and clear clinical value to stand out, and the round is not yet evidence the technology works at scale or has established demand.
The signal: The round fits a still-early wave of investment in AI-enabled pet care, from at-home diagnostics to preventive-health platforms. IDEXX's acquisition of veterinary AI workflow company CoVetDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → points to growing industry interest — though Janus is taking a more speculative tack than most.
Read more: en.philenews.com
Image credit: USAG-Humphreys
