Startups

Lys

San Francisco, California

Non-invasive BCI research and product lab. Wearable consumer interface using fNIRS/neurofeedback so people can communicate with AI without surgery. Named after the land of Lys in Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night.

Team

Anthony KirilovCo-Founder

Desislava NikolovaMachine Learning

Elvinas RibinskasPhysics

Nyx DobrevaCEO

Stefan DragoslavovEngineering

Thomas RialanCo-Founder

Zhengchen CaiNeuroimaging

Investments

$—2026-07-29

Long Journey Ventures, South Park Commons, Cyan Banister

team@apexlogos.ai26 days ago
COMPETITION
team@apexlogos.ai27 days ago
Research memo 2026-09-09. Schema-fit: company Lys (https://lys.inc/); founders Nyx Dobreva (CEO), Thomas Rialan, Anthony Kirilov; team friends Elvinas Ribinskas, Desislava Nikolova, Stefan Dragoslavov, Zhengchen Cai. Chai added only as Thomas's prior employer. No funding round written: South Park Commons and Long Journey Ventures are named on the site with logos only — no amount, close date, or lead status disclosed. What it is - Non-invasive BCI research and product lab. Wearable consumer interface for communicating with AI. Tagline on an earlier snapshot: "Telepathy to control your machines." - Stance: non-invasive because updates should not require surgery and invasive read interfaces are dual-use (can stimulate). Privacy: "Your private thoughts will never leave your machine." Explicitly not writing to the brain. - Named after the land of Lys in Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night. Tech (not EEG) - Neurofeedback PDF by Anthony Kirilov, Nicole Dobreva, Thomas Rialan: collect fNIRS, solve the DOT inverse problem, train nets to categorise thought patterns, feedback to a cap with light sources/detectors. https://framerusercontent.com/assets/uZ4Ly2t28jsQD6JacEFoKJIlrT4.pdf - Zhengchen Cai is a published fNIRS/DOT researcher (McGill Google Scholar). This is optical hemodynamics, not scalp EEG. Investors (named, not booked as a round) - South Park Commons (Adex SouthParkCommons, investorId 2334) and Long Journey Ventures (LongJourneyVentures, 1940) appear as "Backed by top investors" on lys.inc. - Lys demoed at SPC Summer 2026 Demo Faire (29 Jul 2026): "Harness the power of your mind to bend AI to your will… the humanistic path to the merge." https://blog.southparkcommons.com/p/recapping-spcs-summer-2026-demo-faire - SPC Founder Fellowship is typically $1M; current SPC site says funding $1M–$10M. Neither figure is a disclosed Lys check. Do not invent announcedAt. Team - Nyx Dobreva — CEO on the live site; earlier copy and the PDF use Nicole Dobreva. NYU scholarship; BCI under Bettina Sorger (Maastricht fNIRS/fMRI BCI). LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/nyx-dobreva-b278841a7/ - Thomas Rialan — co-founder. Lys links chai-research.com. Cambridge Independent 20 Oct 2022: Chai Research co-founder who moved Cambridge → Palo Alto. Wikipedia lists William Beauchamp as Chai AI founder; CoreWeave stake at $450M (2024). Lys's "$1B+" is a company claim, not a verified current Chai valuation. - Anthony Kirilov — co-founder, computational astrophysics, ORCID 0000-0002-1564-4920, PhD dropout per site. - Elvinas Ribinskas — IPhO gold 2016. - Desislava (Dessy) Nikolova — site says "Fulbright Scholar & CMU PhD in Robotics." Fulbright Bulgaria: 2022-23 visiting researcher at CMU Robotics Institute (Hodgins lab) while doing a PhD at TU Sofia (completed 2024). Treat "CMU PhD" as a site overclaim unless a CMU degree is confirmed. - Stefan Dragoslavov — engineering; competitive programming from 3rd grade. - Zhengchen Cai — neuroimaging / fNIRS. Listings - Site https://lys.inc/ hiring https://lys.inc/hiring.html (Founding Research Scientist) - No PitchBook, Crunchbase, or LinkedIn company page found for this Lys (lys.inc). - SPC Demo Faire listing is the main third-party mention. Do not confuse with - LYS Technologies Ltd / lystechnologies.io — Danish/UK circadian light wearable (Christina Friis Blach Petersen, 2016). - Lys Therapeutics — French tPA-NMDAr biotech, >€25M including MJFF. - LYS Labs / lyslabs.ai — Solana data infra, $4M seed Aug 2025. Schema gaps - No round amount or date, so SPC/Long Journey are not InvestmentParticipation rows. - Non-founder employees stored as friends (AddPerson); they cannot get Role rows without an investor identity. - No HQ beyond SPC SF context; no headcount, entity, or founded year on the site. - Bettina Sorger / Maastricht / NYU not created as Organization records.