Apple has acquired Sonera, a California startup that builds non-invasive magnetic sensors capable of detecting neural and muscle activity without skin contact. The deal, reportedly closed in May 2026, only surfaced through a filing in the European Union's Digital Markets Act acquisition database — Apple never announced it publicly, and Sonera's own website has since gone offline.
Founded in 2018 by UC Berkeley students Nishita Deka and Dominic Labanowski as Sonera Magnetics, the company emerged from stealth in 2023 with $11 million in funding. Its core product, the S1 chip, uses acoustically driven ferromagnetic resonance to pick up the weak magnetic fields generated by neural electrical currents, sidestepping the signal-dampening effect the skull has on ordinary electrical sensors. The company has described the goal as making "brain activity as easy to measure as heart rate, temperature, and other physiological signals."
Apple is expected to fold the technology into future Apple Watch health and accessibility features, with potential uses spanning prosthetics control, continuous monitoring of neuromuscular conditions, disease biomarker discovery, and a new category of muscle-activity-based wearables.