CorTec

Phase A — Understand the business

Lens 1 · Company Overview

CorTec GmbH is a clinical-stage neurotechnology company founded in 2010 in Freiburg, Germany by two neuroengineers, Dr. Martin Schüttler and Dr. Jörn Rickert, out of the Brain Machine Interface Initiative (BMII). It has grown to roughly 60 employees and operates its own development, testing, and cleanroom production site in Freiburg.

The business has two engines, and understanding that duality is the whole story:

1. The flagship — Brain Interchange™. A fully implantable, wireless, bidirectional closed-loop BCI: it both records neural activity and stimulates the cortex (and deep-brain areas) from the same hardware, in a sense-and-respond loop. Up to two multi-channel surface (ECoG) electrodes plus up to two depth electrodes connect to an implanted electronics unit that communicates transcutaneously with external software. This is pre-revenue — it is an investigational device in FDA-authorised trials, not a product on sale.

2. The cash engine — CDMO. CorTec runs a revenue-generating contract-development-and-manufacturing business for advanced implantable components (chiefly its °AirRay electrodes and hermetic encapsulation), selling to "leading neurotechnology companies worldwide". This is the unusual, under-appreciated feature: CorTec is a picks-and-shovels supplier to the BCI field and a BCI developer itself. No public revenue figure is disclosed — n/a — private, not disclosed.

Contract structure / payment terms: The CDMO side is project/component supply (bespoke electrode and encapsulation builds) — order-driven, not recurring or take-or-pay as far as disclosed. The Brain Interchange trials are NIH-funded (the UW stroke study runs on a federal grant), so CorTec is not bearing the full trial cost itself — a meaningful capital-efficiency point.

Customers / suppliers / competitors are mapped in Lenses 2, 3, 7. The one-line model: a German precision-implant manufacturer that sells components to the BCI industry to fund its own decade-long push to be the first therapeutic, bidirectional brain implant.

Lens 2 · Supply Chain

CorTec is unusually vertically integrated for its size — that is the point of the Freiburg cleanroom. The chain, with named stakeholders where disclosable:

Upstream inputs → CorTec:

• Materials: medical-grade silicone (insulation/substrate) and platinum-iridium (PtIr) contacts for the °AirRay electrodes; ceramic + thick-film materials for the hermetic encapsulation. Specific suppliers of the raw PtIr/ceramic are n/a — not disclosed.
• Capital equipment: ultra-short-pulse (USP) laser micromachining systems are the heart of the AirRay process. The laser source vendor is not disclosed ``, but USP-laser supply is a real, narrow market (Trumpf/Coherent-class) — a latent single-vendor dependency worth flagging.
• Implant electronics / ASIC: the implanted electronics unit and its ASIC — whether designed in-house or sourced — is not publicly disclosed. For a closed-loop implant this is the most strategically sensitive node and the biggest supply-chain unknown. n/a — not disclosed.

CorTec (Freiburg cleanroom): laser-structures electrodes, builds hermetic ceramic packages, assembles the implant. This in-house manufacturing is the moat (Lens 3).

CorTec → end customer (two paths):

• CDMO path: electrodes/encapsulation → other neurotech companies and research labs worldwide (named customers undisclosed — a transparency gap).
• Clinical path: Brain Interchange → clinical trial sites: Harborview Medical Center / University of Washington Medicine (stroke), Mayo Clinic (epilepsy), University Hospital Freiburg (depression, planned) → ultimately patients.

Chokepoints / single-source dependencies:

• The implant ASIC/electronics (undisclosed source) — the highest-risk node.
• USP laser supply — narrow vendor market.
• Surgeon/site dependency — implantation requires neurosurgical centres of excellence; throughput is gated by a handful of sites, not by CorTec's manufacturing.

This lens is deliberately specific where public data allows and explicitly flags every "not disclosed" — for a private hardware company the undisclosed ASIC source is the single biggest gap in the whole dossier.

Lens 3 · Competitive Advantages (moats)

CorTec's moat is manufacturing IP + regulatory position, not scale or capital (it has neither). Four durable advantages:

1. °AirRay laser-structured electrodes (patented process moat). Ultra-short-pulse laser micromachining lets CorTec make electrodes in any geometry, with hundreds of contacts, customised per patient and per indication — at high reproducibility. This is a process moat: hard to replicate without the laser know-how and the cleanroom.

2. Hermetic ceramic encapsulation (longevity moat). CorTec claims its proprietary ceramic packaging protects the electronics from moisture ~10× longer than standard titanium packages, with application-specific shapes and hybrid thick-film feedthroughs. Longevity is the existential problem for every chronic implant — the body is a hot, wet, corrosive environment. The 500+ days of continuous, stable operation (Lens 5) is the proof-point that this moat is real, not marketing.

3. Bidirectionality (architecture moat). Most rivals are read-mostly (Synchron's Stentrode, Neuralink's N1 — primarily decode). CorTec records and stimulates from the same implant in a closed loop — which is precisely what a therapeutic (not just communicative) device needs. This positions CorTec for disease modification (stroke plasticity, epilepsy, depression), a different and arguably larger TAM than "let paralysed patients type."

4. Regulatory moat — FDA Breakthrough Device + TAP, first-in-class indication. CorTec holds the only Breakthrough Device Designation worldwide for therapeutic motor rehabilitation after stroke, and is in the FDA's elite Total Product Life Cycle Advisory Program (TAP). Being first to define a regulatory category is a moat — it shapes the eventual approval pathway and the guidance the FDA writes.

Bargaining power: Weak as a buyer, weak as a seller, today. CorTec is small (~60 people, ~$22–27M raised total) — it has little leverage over material/equipment suppliers and is a price-taker. On the sell side it has no commercial product yet. Its only real leverage is scarcity of capability: there are very few places in the world that can build a chronic, bidirectional, hermetically-sealed cortical implant — which is why the CDMO business exists at all.

Lens 4 · Segments

No segment financials are disclosed (private; segments.csv empty) — so this is a qualitative segmentation, every line /:

Geography: R&D and manufacturing Germany (Freiburg); clinical centre of gravity United States (UW/Harborview, Mayo). The 2019 round explicitly funded a US subsidiary for sales/support. The strategic read: build in Germany, prove and (eventually) sell in the US — the US is both the regulatory prize (FDA) and the reimbursement prize.

Why it matters: the four clinical pillars all run on one platform. That is the bull-case leverage (one hardware/regulatory spine, many indications) and the bear-case risk (one platform failure mode — see Lens 13).

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Phase B — Measure performance

+clinical overlay: Lens 5 → Pipeline-by-phase, Lens 7 → Catalyst calendar + mechanism comps, plus +private traction/funding lenses. There are no earnings to print.

Lens 5 · Pipeline by phase (replaces Earnings Result)

The asset table is the company. Brain Interchange is one platform across four indications, each a row:

The single most important data point in the dossier: the device has logged >500 days of continuous, stable operation with full bidirectional function (neural sensing and cortical stimulation) maintained throughout — published in Nature Scientific Data, 2025. For a chronic implant, longevity is the whole ballgame, and a peer-reviewed >500-day result is a genuine de-risking event — it says the hermetic-encapsulation moat (Lens 3) survives contact with reality.

The Apr-2026 milestone is the qualitative "beat": the first reported case worldwide of a single fully-implanted wireless BCI delivering both therapeutic stroke stimulation and thought-based computer control from identical hardware. The first patient showed upper-limb motor recovery that had previously plateaued under conventional therapy — an efficacy signal, not just a feasibility one.

"Balance-sheet flags" equivalent (runway): see Lens 11 — the burning question for a pre-revenue private is cash-to-next-catalyst, and CorTec's thin total raise ($22–27M over 16 years) makes this the dominant risk.

Lens 6 · Founder & management commentary (replaces Earnings Calls)

No earnings calls (private). The +private/+clinical substitute is the founder/management narrative trend via press and interviews:

• Consistent strategic message over time: CorTec frames itself as "the first and only European company" to reach US human BCI trials, and leans hard on the bidirectional / therapeutic distinction vs. the read-only US players. This framing has been stable and is sharpening as the clinical milestones land.
• Tone shift (2024 → 2026): from "platform-building" to "clinical-proof." The 2019-era messaging was about manufacturing capability and next-gen channel counts; the 2025–2026 messaging is dominated by patient outcomes, FDA designations, and Nature publications. That is the correct evolution for a company crossing from R&D into the clinic — the language is following the substance.
• What they emphasise: longevity, bidirectionality, "made in Germany / European sovereignty," and a four-pillar platform story. What is conspicuously absent: any discussion of the next financing, commercial timelines, or CDMO revenue scale. For an investor, that silence is the tell — see Lens 11/13.

Lens 7 · Catalyst calendar + mechanism comps (replaces Comps)

(a) Catalyst calendar — what de-risks or kills the thesis, and roughly when:

(b) Mechanism / category comps — the BCI field (private, so this is a capability & capital table, not a P/E table). Multiples are n/a — private; the relevant axes are approach, channels, capital, FDA status:

The comp that matters: CorTec is two orders of magnitude under-capitalised versus Neuralink and is even dwarfed by Synchron and Precision — yet it holds a differentiated, first-in-class therapeutic indication and a peer-reviewed chronic-longevity result. The investable question is not "is the science good" (it is) — it is "can a ~$25M-raised company survive in a field where rivals raise $200M–$650M per round?" That tension is the entire position (Lens 12/13).

Lens 8 · Funding / product events (replaces Stock-Price Catalysts)

No stock, so the "what moves the name" history is its funding + milestone timeline (all ``):

• 2010 — Founded (Schüttler, Rickert); High-Tech Gründerfonds seed.
• 2010–2018 — Multiple early rounds; HTGF, Mangold, Meder, KfW, LBBW VC build the cap table.
• Nov 7, 2019 — €13M round led by Santo Venture Capital (Strüngmann family) + LBBW VC + existing holders; proceeds for a US subsidiary and next-gen Brain Interchange (more channels). This is the franchise-defining event — the BioNTech family office buying in.
• Feb 2023 — Grant/prize round (undisclosed amount).
• May/Oct 2024 — FDA IDE granted; first-ever human implant of a fully-implantable BCI cleared (UW).
• Jul 2025 — First human implantation (Harborview/UW).
• 2025 — >500-day continuous operation published (Nature Scientific Data).
• Feb 2026 — Second patient implanted.
• Apr 2026 — FDA Breakthrough Device Designation (first BCI worldwide for stroke motor rehab); FDA TAP acceptance; third patient; thought-based computer control (Pong) demonstrated.

Pattern: the market (here, the investor and partner market) reacts to two things — (1) Strüngmann/Santo capital signals and (2) FDA designations + peer-reviewed clinical firsts. The clustering of FDA Breakthrough + TAP + first-patient computer-control in a single month (Apr 2026) is the strongest run of de-risking news in the company's history.

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Phase C — Judge people & books

Lens 9 · Management

• Dr. Oliver Bärtl — CEO (appointed; the operator). Brought in to run the company as it crosses into clinical/commercial; his appointment (alongside an executive-leadership-and-advisory-board strengthening, per CorTec's own release) signals the board is professionalising for the capital-raising/commercial phase. Track record specifics n/a (private; merits diligence).
• Dr. Jörn Rickert — Co-founder, Chief Strategic & Scientific Officer. Neurotech scientist; member of the Senate of Economy (a German business body). The strategy/science conscience of the company.
• Dr. Martin Schüttler — Co-founder, key technical leadership. The electrode/manufacturing brain — °AirRay and the laser process trace to the founders' BMII work.
• Dr. Frank Desiere — executive leadership (named in current management) — life-science/commercial profile.

(1) Track record: the founders have done the hardest thing in implant hardware — built a chronic device that survives >500 days in a human and earned an FDA Breakthrough designation, on ~$25M total. That is extraordinary capital efficiency (compare Neuralink's $1.85B). Skin in the game: founder-led for 16 years — high alignment, deep domain commitment.

(2) Capital allocation: disciplined-by-necessity. They built vertical manufacturing (the cleanroom) and a CDMO revenue line to self-fund — a smart, founder-mentality move. The flip side: 16 years and only ~$25M raised may reflect under-fundraising / over-frugality — in a field where capital is the weapon, frugality can become a structural disadvantage (Lens 13).

(3) Red flags (governance): none disclosed in public sources. The honest caveat: as a private German GmbH, disclosure is thin — no audited financials, no related-party transparency, no insider-ownership table. Absence of evidence ≠ evidence of absence. The appointment of a professional CEO over the founders is a positive governance signal (founders making room for an operator), not a red flag.

(4) Founder vs. professional: a hybrid — founder-scientists (Rickert/Schüttler) on strategy/tech + a professional CEO (Bärtl) on execution/capital. For a company at the cross-into-clinic stage, that is the right archetype.

Lens 10 · Forensic Red Flags

Standard caveat up front: there are no audited financial statements to forensically analyse — CorTec is a private GmbH with no SEC/EDGAR filings (confirmed: no CIK). The income-statement / balance-sheet / cash-flow red-flag battery cannot be run on hard numbers — n/a — no audited financials. What can be assessed:

• Revenue recognition: the CDMO revenue is real but undisclosed in size — impossible to test quality, concentration, or timing. A future investor must demand the CDMO P&L in diligence.
• Going-concern / dilution (the real forensic risk for a pre-revenue private): with ~$25M raised over 16 years and four active/planned clinical programs plus in-house manufacturing, cash burn vs. runway is the dominant accounting risk. The absence of a disclosed 2024–2026 financing round (Lens 11) is the flag that matters. Dilution risk is high — the next round, if it must be raised from a position of need, could be punitive.
• Capitalised vs. expensed R&D / inventory: under German GAAP (HGB) a GmbH may capitalise development costs — without statements, the quality of any capitalised R&D is unknowable. Flag for diligence.

Regulatory findings (required sub-section). Per regulatory/regulatory-findings.md (written 2026-06-22 by fetch-regulatory-findings.ts):

• SEC (EDGAR EFTS — LR + AAER): 0 findings. CorTec has no CIK — it is private and not required to file with the SEC, so no EDGAR enforcement search is possible.
• Non-SEC enforcement (web search — FTC/DOJ/FDA/consent-decree/penalty): no material adverse hits found. CorTec's FDA touchpoints are favourable (IDE, Breakthrough, TAP), not enforcement actions. Note: an FDA Breakthrough/TAP relationship is the opposite of an FDA enforcement problem.
• Litigation (10-K Item 3 equivalent): none available — no filings exist. No public litigation surfaced in web search.
• Verdict: No material regulatory or legal findings — verified via SEC EDGAR EFTS (LR, AAER → 0), web search (no adverse enforcement), and the absence of any filing-based litigation disclosure, as of 2026-06-22. All financials remain unaudited per public sources.

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Phase D — Project & stress-test

Lens 11 · IPO-readiness & path-to-tradeable (replaces Forward Projection / rNPV)

No EPS line is possible (pre-revenue, private). The +private Lens 11 question is "what makes this tradeable, and when," and the +clinical overlay adds "does cash reach the next value-inflection catalyst." Both are answered here.

research/private-watch.json status: NO ENTRY for CorTec. The IPO-readiness grounding file (which the +private overlay is supposed to read) does not track CorTec — a coverage gap. On the file's own 1–5 readiness scale (1=early/seed … 5=S-1 filed/IPO imminent), I score CorTec a 2 (growth-stage), trending toward 3 only if it raises a real institutional round. Recommended writeback (post-wave, outside this skill's edit boundary): add a cortec entry under watch — beat: bci, stage: growth, ipo_readiness: 2, lead_investors: "Santo VC (Strüngmann), LBBW VC", catalyst: "stroke-cohort efficacy + first institutional round; FDA Breakthrough+TAP de-risking", dossier: "companies/cortec/deep-dive-2026-06-22.md".

Path-to-tradeable — the milestones that unlock liquidity:

1. A real institutional financing round (Series C/D, $50M+). This is the gate. CorTec cannot reach a pivotal trial, let alone an IPO, on $25M. The bull signal would be Santo/Strüngmann leading a BioNTech-style large round — the family office has the capacity (they wrote €136.5M into BioNTech's seed) and the temperament (decade-long bets). Whether they treat CorTec as a core bet or a cheap option is the single most important unknown in this dossier.
2. Multi-patient stroke efficacy data (2026–2027) — converts the platform from "feasible" to "works."
3. Pivotal trial design agreed via TAP — the FDA relationship that could shorten the path.
4. Either: a strategic acquisition (Medtronic — already a BCI-adjacent name in our index — Boston Scientific, or a large-cap neuromod player buying the bidirectional platform + IP) or a late-stage crossover round → eventual IPO. Given the capital intensity and the German venture context, trade-sale is the more probable liquidity path than a standalone IPO ``.

Runway-to-catalyst (the +clinical question): unquantifiable from public data, and that is itself the finding. No disclosed cash balance, no disclosed burn, no disclosed 2024–2026 round. With four programs + in-house manufacturing, base-rate burn for a 60-person implant company is easily $10–20M/yr ``. Against a ~$25M lifetime raise and NIH covering trial costs, CorTec is likely living hand-to-mouth on CDMO revenue + grants + bridge capital. Does runway reach the next catalyst? Unknown — and "unknown" on a pre-revenue implant company is a yellow flag, not a green one.

No forecast.ts line logged — there is no EPS or clean binary I can responsibly commit to a Brier score on for a private company with no disclosed financials or dated pivotal endpoint. (Per skill: skip the forecast create in --watchlist; only log a genuinely committed call. A defensible future binary would be "CorTec announces a ≥$50M institutional round by end-2027," but I leave it unlogged pending Connor's steer.)

Lens 12 · Bull vs Bear

Bull case. CorTec is the cleanest "be-early" expression in the BCI census: the only European bidirectional BCI in US human trials, holding a first-in-class FDA Breakthrough + TAP position for stroke rehab, with a peer-reviewed >500-day chronic-longevity result that validates its hardest technical moat (encapsulation). It is therapeutic, not just communicative — aimed at disease modification (stroke plasticity, epilepsy, depression) across four indications on one platform, a structurally larger and more reimbursable TAM than "type with your mind." It is run by capital-efficient founder-scientists who built all this on ~$25M, now backstopped by a professional CEO. And the kicker: it is funded by Santo/Strüngmann — the family office that turned a €136.5M seed into BioNTech (>$100B). If that office decides CorTec is its neuro-BioNTech, the capital and patience exist to fund it to the finish. The market is currently refusing to see that a tiny German company quietly holds a better therapeutic position than the billion-dollar US headline names.

Bear case (risks that could permanently impair):

1. Capital starvation in a capital-arms-race. Rivals raise $200M–$650M per round; CorTec has raised ~$25M in 16 years. If the next round doesn't materialise — or comes at a punitive, control-shifting valuation — CorTec gets out-capitalised, out-hired, and out-iterated regardless of how good the science is. This is the thesis-killer.
2. Single-platform, single-modality concentration. Everything rides on one Brain Interchange platform. A chronic-failure mode (encapsulation breach at year 3, immune response, ASIC fault) discovered in a later/larger cohort impairs all four indications at once.
3. Long, uncertain, expensive regulatory road. Breakthrough/TAP accelerate but do not guarantee — a pivotal stroke-rehab trial is years and tens of millions away, and CorTec must fund it.

Pre-mortem (18 months out, thesis broke): It's late 2027. CorTec's stroke cohort showed feasibility but not a clean efficacy signal; the long-promised institutional round never closed at an attractive valuation; Santo declined to lead a mega-round (treating CorTec as an option, not a core bet); the company took a small, dilutive bridge and slowed hiring while Neuralink and Synchron raised again and pulled further ahead on channels and patients. CorTec ends up a trade-sale to a strategic at a modest premium to invested capital — fine for the founders, underwhelming as a venture outcome.

Are multiples too high? No multiple to assess (private, no disclosed valuation). The relevant valuation risk is the opposite — that the next round reprices CorTec down relative to peers because it's raising from need, not strength.

Contrarian view: the headline BCI narrative is "Neuralink vs. Synchron, channel count is king." CorTec quietly argues the more valuable category is therapeutic closed-loop on durable surface hardware — and it has the only first-in-class FDA stroke designation and the longest published chronic-uptime result to back it. The market is paying $8B for the channel-count story and ~nothing for the therapeutic-longevity story. If therapy (not communication) is where reimbursement and real patient volume land, the market has the valuation backwards.

Lens 13 · Devil's Advocate (short-seller)

Dismantling the bull case:

• The capital reality is brutal and the bull case hand-waves it. "Capital-efficient!" is the polite framing of "chronically under-funded." In implantable hardware, capital buys iteration speed, channel count, manufacturing scale, and trial throughput — the exact axes on which CorTec is behind. ~$25M in 16 years isn't discipline; it may be a market verdict that institutional capital has repeatedly passed on leading a big CorTec round. Why has no tier-1 crossover (Coatue, Fidelity, T. Rowe — the IPO-proximity tells) shown up after Santo's 2019 entry? That silence is the short thesis.
• The Strüngmann halo is doing too much work. Santo leading a €13M round in 2019 is not the same as Santo committing BioNTech-scale capital. Family offices hold dozens of options; CorTec may be a small, cheap call that never gets exercised at scale. Bulls are pricing in a mega-round that has not been announced.
• Revenue is concentrated in an opaque CDMO line. The only revenue is undisclosed, likely small, and possibly concentrated in a few neurotech customers — who are also the competition. If those customers in-source electrode/encapsulation manufacturing (or a rival capitalises a competing CDMO), the funding bridge erodes.
• Most dangerous competitor bulls underestimate: Precision Neuroscience + Blackrock. Not Neuralink (different, penetrating approach) — but the surface-array players (Precision, already 510(k)-clearing components; Blackrock, with the most human-years of data) who could converge on bidirectional/therapeutic use with far more capital. CorTec's surface-ECoG niche is defensible but narrow.
• What must hold for the story: (a) the next round closes, large and non-punitive; (b) chronic longevity holds in more patients over more years; (c) a stroke-rehab efficacy signal emerges that's clean enough for a pivotal; (d) a reimbursement path exists for an expensive implant in rehabilitation. Break any one and the equity value craters. If trial enrollment/efficacy disappoints by 20–30%, the valuation (whatever it is) likely halves, because for a pre-revenue private, the value is the probability-weighted clinical narrative.
• The single permanently-impairing scenario: a chronic safety/longevity failure (encapsulation breach, infection, or immune response) in a later cohort — discovered after more patients are implanted. Plausibility: moderate. The >500-day result lowers it but does not eliminate it; n is tiny, and "stable in 1–3 patients for ~1.5 years" is not "safe in hundreds for a decade."

Lens 14 · Management Questions (ordered by information value)

1. What is your current cash position and monthly burn, and through what date does it fund operations at the present program scope? (The whole thesis hinges on this — answer first.)
2. Is Santo/Strüngmann prepared to lead a large (≥$50M) institutional round, and on what terms — or do you need a new lead? (Tests whether the family-office halo is real conviction or a cheap option.)
3. Why, after Santo's 2019 entry, has no tier-1 crossover (Fidelity/T. Rowe/Coatue-class) led a round? What did the conversations that didn't close teach you?
4. What is CDMO revenue (last 12 months), its growth, gross margin, and customer concentration — and who are the top customers? (Tests the only real revenue line; also a competitive-leak question.)
5. What is the chronic-failure rate and longest patient-uptime to date, and what specifically fails first as implants age — biologically and in the hardware?
6. What is the pivotal stroke-rehab trial design, n, primary endpoint, timeline, and cost — and how will you fund it?
7. What is the reimbursement thesis for a BCI in rehabilitation — what payer pathway and price point, in which geographies first?
8. Who designs and supplies the implant ASIC/electronics, and how single-sourced is that node? (The biggest undisclosed supply-chain risk.)
9. Across the four indications, where do you focus if forced to pick one — and why isn't that already the answer given limited capital?
10. What is the IP estate — granted patents, key claims (AirRay process, encapsulation), expiries — and what is genuinely defensible vs. trade-secret-dependent?
11. Is the more likely liquidity path a strategic acquisition (by whom?) or a standalone IPO, and what would have to be true for each?
12. How do you out-iterate rivals raising 10–25× your lifetime capital per round — what is your actual competitive plan, not just differentiation?
13. What did the FDA TAP interactions change about your development plan, concretely?
14. What is the manufacturing scale-up plan and unit cost trajectory from cleanroom-bespoke to commercial volume?
15. What governance/insider-ownership structure exists today, and how will a large round change control?

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