Most epileptic seizures happen when no doctor is watching: at night, at home, between hospital stays. Neuro Event Labs, a company from Tampere in Finland, built Nelli, a camera and microphone that sit in the patient's room while software flags the movements and sounds of a seizure for a clinician to review. In the EIC Accelerator pilot's March 2020 cut-off, the European Commission selected its project EPINOSTICS for blended finance, a grant plus equity. CORDIS lists an EU contribution of €1,881,250 towards a total cost of €2,687,500 for a 24-month project from 1 September 2020 to 31 August 2022. The Commission list names Neuro Event Labs Oy as the only beneficiary of the project.
Six years later the product has the regulatory papers the project set out to get. Sales have not followed. Revenue fell from €1.10 million in 2021 to about €0.22 million in 2025, according to the filed accounts summarised by Asiakastieto and Finder. Net losses over those five years add up to €11.0 million in Finder's figures.
Company file
- Legal entity
- Neuro Event Labs Oy, business ID 2712284-1
- Registered
- September 2015, Tampere
- Headquarters
- Biokatu 10, Tampere; US office in San Antonio, Texas
- Leadership
- Martijn Wallert (CEO), Kaapo Annala (co-founder, COO), Jukka Peltola (co-founder, medical director)
- Product
- Nelli seizure monitoring system, EU MDR Class IIa, FDA 510(k) K251506
- Main shareholders
- Hadean Capital I, Hventures Capital, EIC Fund, Maki.vc Fund I
- EIC project
- EPINOSTICS, March 2020 cut-off, blended finance, closed August 2022
- Staff
- 15 in the 2025 accounts, down from 39 in 2021
Where Neuro Event Labs Stands Now
The company is active and raising money. On 1 September 2026 it opened a crowdfunding round on Invesdor for €1 million to €2 million at a €15 million pre-money valuation, with €500,000 of anchor commitments led by Hadean Ventures. The offer page gives a frank picture of the balance sheet: €500,000 in liquid funds, an average monthly cash burn of €100,000, and €4.0 million owed to Business Finland, the Finnish state innovation agency, with repayment starting no earlier than mid-2028. With €1 million raised, the company says its money lasts until September 2027. When the page was read, the round stood at €816,937.56.
The Finnish register shows no insolvency, liquidation or name change. The company has carried the same name since its entry in the trade register on 29 September 2015 and has been at Biokatu 10 in Tampere since January 2018, according to the Finnish Patent and Registration Office. Its website says it was founded in 2015; its own FDA press release says 2016.
The Technology: A Camera Instead of Electrodes
The standard way to capture seizures is video-EEG monitoring: electrodes glued to the scalp, a camera, and days in a hospital epilepsy unit. Some patients cannot tolerate the wires, often people with intellectual disabilities, the company notes in its report of a Cornwall study, and families at home rely on seizure diaries. Nelli records video and audio without touching the patient. Software flags events with a "positive motor component", meaning visible movement, and a clinician, or the company's own review team, classifies them on a web dashboard, according to the company's description of its service. It cannot see seizures without movement, which EEG can.
The closest rival named in its US file is a wristband. The FDA clearance summary uses Empatica's Embrace, a wrist-worn sensor of skin conductance and motion that detects generalised tonic-clonic seizures, as the predicate device. Nelli's claim is broader: it detects and ranks several types of motor seizure, not only convulsions, without anything worn on the body.
The best public test is a study at two Danish epilepsy centres, published in Frontiers in Neuroinformatics in March 2024. Across 230 patients and 334 motor seizures, the system found 95.2% of tonic-clonic seizures with 0.09 false detections per hour, and 88% of all motor seizures with 6.48 false detections per hour at a single threshold. Five of the authors were employees of Neuro Event Labs, two were shareholders, and the company funded the study, the paper discloses.
The false alarm problem
In the US validation study, the cleared device caught 84.5% of convulsive seizures with 1.20 false detections per 24 hours, and 84.3% of other major motor seizures with 146 false detections per 24 hours, according to the FDA summary. The broader the seizure types, the more footage a clinician has to review.
What EPINOSTICS Promised, and What CORDIS Shows
The CORDIS objective describes a product then called "Aida" that would detect "all motor seizure types", building on a version that detected convulsive seizures at night. The project was to capture "a significant portion of the €6.5 billion annual market opportunity". In its June 2020 announcement of the grant, the company said it would use the money "to become the standard of care in epilepsy diagnostics". Two months earlier it had told Tech.eu it aimed to be "the standard for epilepsy treatment in Europe by 2021".
The final periodic report, covering September 2021 to August 2022, says the software for detecting all seizures was ready, a hardware prototype for real-time detection was installed, clinical validation was complete, the CE indication had been updated, and a self-installation version reached a bill of materials of €600. It also said the FDA 510(k) application was "under final review" and that clearance was expected "during October 2022 or early November". The project lists three peer-reviewed papers on CORDIS.
- Detection of all motor seizure typesDeliveredSix motor seizure categories tested in the 2024 Danish study; "other major motor" events are part of the US clearance.
- Clinical validation and EU certificationDeliveredEU MDR Class IIa certificate announced in December 2024.
- FDA 510(k) clearance by late 2022Three years lateK251506, received 16 May 2025 and cleared 21 November 2025, for adults in healthcare facilities only, per the FDA.
- €600 self-install home deviceCompany report onlyStated in the CORDIS report; no independent confirmation found.
- Become the standard of care and win market shareNot achievedRevenue fell every year from 2021 to 2025.
The technical work was done, and the EU certificate followed. What went wrong was the US timeline, which the company's commercial plan depended on. The FDA's 510(k) database lists one clearance for the company, K251506; the application behind it reached the FDA in May 2025, two and a half years after the date the report gave for clearance. What happened to the application under review in 2022 is not public. The cleared indication is narrower than the project's vision: patients aged 18 and over, in healthcare facilities, during periods of rest. Home monitoring, which the company's 2026 release stresses because many seizures occur at night or at home, is not covered by the US clearance.
What It Has Achieved Since the Award
The customer list is real but small. In April 2021 the company announced a five-year contract with the Filadelfia epilepsy hospital in Dianalund, Denmark, covering all 46 beds. It names studies at Linköping University Hospital in Sweden and in Cornwall, and an at-home project with Newcastle University funded by the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Research. Tech.eu reported 20 European hospitals using Nelli in 2020; the company's website now says 30 or more, and its September 2026 release says more than 60 hospitals and 7,000 patients. The figures could not be reconciled from public sources.
In the US the company named Rod Williams, a former Johnson & Johnson and GE manager, as chief executive of its US subsidiary in August 2022, its news page shows. After the clearance it said commercial rollout would begin in early 2026, and the Invesdor offer says six to seven US hospitals are preparing commercial pilots. On 26 August 2026 it announced that the US Medicare agency had approved a New Technology Add-On Payment of up to $975 per eligible inpatient case from 1 October 2026. No US hospital contract has been announced.
The Money
Private money arrived around the grant. The company raised €0.5 million from Maki.vc and €0.1 million from OmaMedical in 2018, alongside €1.3 million from Business Finland, according to its news archive. A €3.9 million Series A followed in April 2020, led by Hadean Ventures with SHS Capital and Maki.vc, as reported by Tech.eu and the deal's lawyers at Castrén & Snellman. In February 2025 it raised €2.0 million from Catalyze Capital, Hadean Ventures and others, a round also logged by Signalbase.
The company says it has raised about €12.2 million since 2018 from investors including the EIC Fund. The announced rounds above add up to €6.5 million; the rest, including the EIC equity, is not itemised publicly. Neuro Event Labs is listed in the EIC Fund's portfolio, and the Invesdor offer puts the fund's stake at 12.5%. The amount and date of the EIC investment could not be found.
The accounts show the cost of the wait. Operating losses peaked at €3.07 million in 2023. The 2025 accounts report an equity ratio of minus 177%, counting capital loans as debt, according to Asiakastieto, meaning liabilities exceed assets on that basis.
What the company says
"Approximately €1.2 million in 2025 revenue and €6.5 million in lifetime revenue from research, hospital and home use", per the Invesdor offer.
What the filed accounts show
Revenue of €215,000 (Asiakastieto) or €216,000 (Finder) for 2025. The offer does not explain the gap, and it could not be resolved from public sources.
Why Europe Should Care
Nelli is AI used inside a medical device, the category the EU's AI Act treats as high risk; the obligations for AI built into regulated products such as medical devices apply from 2 August 2028, according to the European Commission. A European company that already holds an MDR certificate and a US clearance for clinical AI is the kind of firm the EU says it wants to keep.
The record also shows the limits of that ambition. The EU paid for the development and the EIC Fund owns a stake, but the company's latest milestones are American: an FDA clearance, a Medicare payment and US hospital pilots.
The Verdict
Built, certified, not yet sold
EPINOSTICS did most of what it set out to do technically: the software detects a wide range of motor seizures, the device is certified in Europe and, three years later than planned, cleared in the US. The commercial promise did not hold. Revenue fell about 80% between 2021 and 2025, staff fell from 39 to 15, and the company is crowdfunding with €4.0 million of state loans to repay from 2028. Whether US reimbursement turns the clearance into sales is the open question.
Neuro Event Labs has not been asked for comment for this article. It is based entirely on public records, company statements, regulatory filings and EU project data, linked throughout.
Sources
- CORDIS, EPINOSTICS fact sheet and periodic report
- European Commission, EIC Accelerator selected companies, March and May 2020 cut-offs
- EIC Fund, invested companies
- Finnish Patent and Registration Office, open company data
- Asiakastieto, Neuro Event Labs Oy financials and Finder profile
- US FDA, 510(k) K251506 decision and summary and openFDA 510(k) records
- Rai et al., Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, March 2024
- Invesdor, Neuro Event Labs funding round, 2026
- Neuro Event Labs, news archive, including the FDA clearance, CMS payment, MDR certificate and 2025 funding releases
- Tech.eu, Series A, 9 April 2020
- Castrén & Snellman, Hadean Ventures investment, May 2020
- Signalbase, €2.0M round, February 2025
- European Commission, AI Act regulatory framework
