The Peter Thiel-backed sleep startup on a quest to solve restless nights

What if a device not only tracks your sleep but also helps you sleep better?

Tam Vu, co-founder and CEO of Earable Neuroscience, says his startup has manufactured an AI-powered headband that can track and stimulate brain activity to improve users’ sleep, focus, and relaxation.

The Frenz brainband / Photo credit: Earable Neuroscience

Vu, a Vietnamese scientist who left his associate professorship at Oxford University, is the co-inventor of the Frenz Brainband, one of the consumer devices that recently won an innovation award at CES 2023.

Falling asleep with an “earable”

Earable Neuroscience, based in both the US and Vietnam, is looking to commercialize the Frenz Brainband – currently priced at US$499. Nearly a decade’s worth of research by Vu and his colleagues at Oxford University and the University of Colorado went into creating the product.

In 2016, Vu co-authored a scientific paper that introduced LIBS, described as “a lightweight and inexpensive wearable sensing system that can capture electrical activities of the human brain, eyes, and facial muscles.”

Vu says it’s the foundational paper for Earable Neuroscience, which first coined the term “earable” for in-ear wearable devices that can both track and improve users’ sleep, among other things.

Humans ideally spend a third of their lives sleeping. Low-quality sleep can hurt both our physical and psychological health. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated sleep problems across the world.

As an earable device with 15 patents, the Frenz Brainband, as advertised, does more than just track your sleep. Vu says its three core values are: personalization, closed loop, and real-time stimulation.

The Frenz Brainband is advertised as having the ability to track and stimulate users to fall asleep./ Photo credit: Earable Neuroscience

More specifically, he says that through bone-conduction speakers, the headband can track sleep almost as precisely as in-lab medical devices and use clinically proven content – whether sound, music, or cognitive behavioral therapies – to coach the user to sleep.

“Everything is done in real time. The device will adjust its stimulation based on your neurofeedback signals to make you sleep faster, deeper, and wake up more refreshed,” Vu said in an interview with Tech in Asia.

Vu says the Frenz Brainband is the only device that can measure and stimulate brain activity, outperforming competitors such as the Apple Watch, the Oura ring, or Whoop. Notably, US-based startup Oura announced last April that it had sold 1 million Oura rings and was valued at US$2.55 billion.

Tapping into a billion-dollar snooze market