Australia’s richest families back brain mapping software company

Mr Vicars placed half of the $20 million in seed capital raised two years ago, helping to secure some other wealthy investors in this fresh round.

“This is revolutionary what they’re doing,” the co-chief investment officer of the $10 billion investment firm Caledonia said.

“It was a philanthropic-type attitude for me when it started. But on the other side it has an asymmetric upside if it works, so I thought you’ve got to give it a go regardless. The people that were behind it are exceptional on a global stage.”

Mr Vicars told The Australian Financial Review it was about helping a start-up to become a world-class leader in the space.

Mrs Rinehart, who is one of the larger shareholders, declined to comment, as did several other high-profile investors. But her Hancock Prospecting has been investing in new spaces, including backing WA cannabis company Little Green Pharma, providing $15 million in its latest capital raising.

Omniscient is hiring another 100 staff – tripling in size from its 50 employees in Australia, China and the US – after gaining marketing approval by the powerful Food and Drug Administration for its Quicktome product, and making its first software as a service sale to a Florida hospital in mid-June.

Quicktome is the world’s first medical device to harness vital data for neurological care, providing neurosurgeons brain network information prior to surgery. Quicktome analyses millions of data points derived from a patient’s MRI. Most of the analysis takes place in the cloud and can be accessed on a desktop computer or mobile.

Omniscient has commitments from some of the most prestigious neuroscience institutions including Harvard, Stanford, Cambridge and The Mayo Clinic using its second tool, called Infinotome. This allows neuroscientists and neurosurgeons to take brain data and gain “connectomics” insights out of the data for research they are conducting.

In addition, it has a robust IP portfolio of 26 patents in train, with an invention team working to produce up to 50 more patents through 2023.

The chief executive of the minnow, Stephen Scheeler, said the possible addressable market was “the 8 billion brains on earth”.

“We build the Google maps of the brain. The brain is the most complex thing we know,” the former Facebook Australia boss said.

“With the advances made in recent years, particularly by companies such as I used to work for – Facebook, Google and machine learning and artificial intelligence – now we have the computing power and the algorithm to help us in a way we never did even just five years ago.

“As we’ve come to understand these past few years, the brain is a network of networks. It’s essentially just a data network that is processing everything in real time.”

The technology transforms brain activity into visual “maps” showing the connections that are present, or not present, in the brain. This then gives doctors, psychologists and neuroscientists insights into potential neurological disorders, brain health issues and mental illness.

Mr Scheeler said the goal was to not only help improve the brains that are ill with diseases such as Alzheimer’s and dementia but also build tools that help healthy brains perform at a higher level.

He likened this market now in its infancy to what social media was in its early days.

“It’s the same thing here in many ways. It’s so groundbreaking, it’s transformational,” he said.

While Omniscient could one day be publicly listed, Mr Scheeler is not in any hurry. In the next investing round, he expects to gain traction with US venture capitalists, and has already held talks with China’s Tencent Holdings and US giants Google and Microsoft about investing in Omniscient.

“Our mission is to improve the lives of billions in connectomics. It’s not a short-term play. There’s other ways to grow our business, and we were hoping to be cash flow positive within a couple of years. We have a very profitable SaaS (software as a service) business model.”