NextSense wins a spot on the Oprah Daily 2026 Sleep Awards
NextSense Smartbuds were just named Best Sleep Buds in Oprah Daily’s 2026 Sleep Awards — a carefully curated roundup of the best technology for falling asleep faster, sleeping longer, and waking up truly refreshed. Being selected for this list - alongside a field of premium sleep technology - is a powerful signal of consumer validation.
Oprah’s research director, Andrew Gillings, personally tested the Smartbuds and shared:
“I average about four and a half hours of sleep a night, and these have changed how I feel the next day: less groggy and irritable, and more consistently alert. I didn’t gain hours — I gained energy, and my days feel a little easier.”
This testimony speaks directly to what NextSense has been building toward, with a commercial launch this past February.
A Company On the Move
The Oprah recognition caps a stretch of momentum for NextSense. Here is a look at the milestones that have defined the past 18 months:
November 2025 — $16 Million Series A
NextSense closed an oversubscribed $16 million Series A led by Ascension Ventures, with participation from Satori Neuro and Corundum Neuroscience Fund. Individual investors include Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman and Esther Dyson, founder of Wellville — a roster that reflects deep confidence in both the science and the commercial opportunity.
January 2026 — CES Recognition
NextSense demonstrated Smartbuds at CES 2026 in Las Vegas, earning a USA Today Top Pick designation among the show’s standout products — a signal of growing industry and consumer interest in brain-responsive sleep technology.
February 2026 — Commercial Launch
NextSense announced the official commercial launch and shipping of Smartbuds — the world’s first truly wireless EEG earbuds available to consumers. Early-bird pricing of $249 (retail $399.99) reflects premium positioning in a sleep economy valued at $585 billion.
NextSense was founded by Jonathan Berent after a pivotal personal moment: when his smartwatch flagged an AFib alert, he realized that consumers had meaningful, real-time data about their heart — but virtually nothing about their brain. He left Alphabet’s X (Google’s “Moonshot Factory") to close that gap, spinning out NextSense as an independent company in 2020. The underlying brain-sensing technology came from Google X, where it was originally built for clinical use — including early detection of epilepsy — and has since expanded to sleep, focus, and mental health, all in service of one mission: make brain health as accessible as step counting.
Berent assembled a team to match this mission. Head of Product Caitlin Shure, PhD brings deep expertise in translating neuroscience into consumer-ready solutions and has been instrumental in shaping how NextSense positions Smartbuds at the intersection of wellness and clinical-grade technology.
As Shure has noted, the wellness framing is deliberate: “We’re not claiming to diagnose or treat any clinical conditions. It’s truly a wellness product. Sleep is a huge space for this because there are many people who wouldn’t go to a doctor and say, ‘I think I have a sleep disorder.’” The opportunity, in other words, is vast — and largely untapped.
Together, this leadership team has spent years ensuring the science is rigorous and the experience is effortless — two things that rarely coexist in health tech.
NextSense Smartbuds use clinical-grade EEG sensors to measure brain activity in real time — then respond with precisely timed audio stimulation to guide users into deeper, more restorative sleep. Unlike wrist trackers that infer sleep stages from movement or heart rate, Smartbuds go straight to the source. When they detect the brain shifting into slow-wave deep sleep — the most restorative stage, associated with physical recovery, memory consolidation, and next-day alertness — they emit specific audio pulses to help sustain that state longer. Over time, the system learns each user’s individual neural patterns, personalizing the experience nightly.
The early data is compelling. In a controlled beta period across 106 nights, Smartbuds increased slow-wave activity, with nearly half of participants reporting better sleep and improved morning recovery, with high comfort and audio quality. Across multiple beta cohorts, NextSense has now collected over 1,000 nights of real-world in-ear EEG data — one of the largest consumer sleep datasets of its kind outside a controlled study.
This is not passive monitoring with a dashboard. This is closed-loop neurotechnology — perceiving your brain state and responding to it in real time. It is a fundamentally different category, and NextSense is building it from the ground up.
Why This Matters For Capita3
At Capita3, we are on a mission to help us heal and be healthy. We are driven to get out in front of disease, and we do this by investing in nontraditional founders at the intersection of frontier technology and healthcare — companies building what we call personalized, precise, and predictive healthcare. NextSense is a great example of that thesis in action.
Nearly 70 million Americans live with chronic sleep disorders. Poor sleep is linked to cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, depression, anxiety, cognitive decline, and reduced daily performance. The sleep economy is valued at $585 billion — yet the vast majority of that market has been built on products that observe but don’t act. NextSense is building the next generation of that market: one where technology doesn’t just tell you how you slept, but actively makes your sleep better.
Jonathan Berent and Caitlin Shure have approached this opportunity with scientific rigor, thoughtful product design, and a clear-eyed view of how to bring clinical-grade neurotechnology to everyday consumers without hype and overpromise. That combination is rare, and we believe this is what takes to win in the sleep marketplace with a product that endures. We believe brain health is the next healthcare frontier, with NextSense leading the way.
