Apple has acquired certain assets of Sonera, a California startup that built chip-based magnetic sensors able to detect brain and muscle activity without touching the skin, according to a filing in the European Commission's Digital Markets Act acquisition database that was reported on September 8, 2026.
The filing, dated May 8, describes the deal as a purchase of some of Sonera's assets through an Apple subsidiary, along with offers of employment to some of the startup's employees. Apple has not announced the transaction or disclosed a price, and Sonera's website has been taken offline.
It is not clear how many Sonera employees moved to Apple or what happens to the rest of the company.
What Sonera built
Nerve and muscle activity produce both electrical currents and magnetic fields. Most wearable and medical sensors measure the electrical signals, which are weakened by body tissue and the skull and need electrodes pressed against the skin. Sonera's approach was to measure the magnetic fields instead, which pass through tissue more easily and can be picked up without contact.
Its stated goal was to make brain activity as easy to measure as heart rate or temperature. The first product, the S1 chip, was designed for muscle sensing, since those signals are stronger and simpler than brain signals. It was pitched for gesture control in smartwatches, rings and other wearables, as well as for prosthetics control, monitoring of neuromuscular conditions, biomarker discovery and sports performance tracking.
The work points to possible uses at Apple in health monitoring, accessibility and new ways to control devices. Wearables are among the product categories listed in the EU filing.
“The tools we have today for measuring neural activity are either rudimentary or inaccessible, and that’s prevented us from gathering critical information about our brains and bodies.”
Why magnetic sensing matters
Sonera's argument was that electrical signals from the brain are attenuated as they pass through the skull, which is one reason high-quality brain-computer interfaces have so far relied on surgically implanted hardware. Measuring the magnetic fields produced by the same activity could, in principle, give better readings from outside the body. The company worked to make that kind of sensing small, portable and cheap enough for consumer products, building it on a chip.
Apple Vision Pro has previously been demonstrated working with implanted brain-interface systems, according to Pulse 2.0. A non-invasive sensor could offer similar control without surgery, though Apple has given no sign of when, or whether, Sonera's work will appear in a product.
The founders and the funding
Nishita Deka and Dominic Labanowski founded Sonera in 2018 after meeting as graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. The company, originally called Sonera Magnetics, raised an initial round in 2020 led by Spark Capital.
It came out of stealth in 2023 with an $11 million seed round led by Amplify Partners, with Abstract Ventures and existing investors taking part. That brought its total funding, including government grants, to $20 million. Other backers included Material Impact, Boom Capital and Josh Duyan, co-founder of CTRL-Labs.
"The tools we have today for measuring neural activity are either rudimentary or inaccessible, and that's prevented us from gathering critical information about our brains and bodies," Deka said at the time.
Why Apple is buying
Apple rarely explains small acquisitions, and it has not said what it plans to do with Sonera's technology. The deal fits a pattern of unannounced 2026 purchases linked to future devices. In January Apple paid nearly $2 billion for Israeli AI startup Q.AI, another deal connected to wearables, and it has also bought data management startup SigScalr and Czech materials science company PlasmaSolve this year, according to iClarified.
Apple has already added support for brain-computer interfaces to accessibility features such as Switch Control. A non-invasive sensor that reads muscle or neural signals from a watch or ring could give it a way to offer similar control without implanted hardware.
