Harvard neuroscientist seeks $100M to build AI that never forgets
What's the deal? Engramme, a startup founded by former Harvard Medical SchoolDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → professor Gabriel KreimanDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → based on his research into how the brain encodes memory, is in talks to raise around $100 million at a valuation of up to $1 billion, according to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter.
The startup was founded in 2025 by Kreiman, whose research spans neuroscience and AI, and co-founder Spandan MadanDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, a HarvardDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → PhD. It emerged from stealth in March 2026.
Why now? Kreiman has spent over two decades studying how the brain encodes memory, including landmark neuroscience research published in Nature showing that individual neurons fire both when a person sees an image and when they simply imagine it.
Engramme is commercialising that insight through what it calls "large memory models" — AI systems designed to store information at petabyte scale, surface relevant data proactively without a search query, and connect information across time and context, mimicking the way the hippocampus links related memories.
The consumer iOS app is in beta. An enterprise API is in development, with an identified use case around preserving institutional knowledge lost when employees leave — a problem companies are increasingly willing to pay to solve.
What could go wrong? A $1 billion valuation for a company with a beta app and a $3 million pre-seed is aggressive by any measure. The fundraise is still in early discussions and could change materially or fall apart.
Engramme also faces credible competition from Mem0, Limitless, Zep AIDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Letta — none of which lack engineering talent or funding. The company claims its neuroscience-grounded approach is fundamentally superior to conventional vector database architectures, but has not yet published independent benchmarks to support that assertion.
The signal: Engramme is part of a growing class of so-called neolabs — research-first AI companies founded by academics with frontier scientific credentials rather than engineering pedigree. The category has attracted enormous capital: Periodic Labs, founded by former OpenAI and Google DeepMind researchers, has discussed raising hundreds of millions at a $7 billion valuation; former Meta research chief Yann LeCunDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → raised $1 billion in March 2026 for AMI Labs, his world-model AI startup.
The common thread is a bet that the next breakthrough in AI will come from deeper science rather than bigger compute. Whether Engramme's neuroscience approach to memory yields a genuinely differentiated product or simply a compelling founding story will take years to determine — but investors are clearly willing to pay for the optionality.
Sources:
Bloomberg
Tech Funding News
The Independent
Image credit:
Engramme
J.V.
