BRYM raises €650k: Why cognitive performance may become part of the sportstech stack
Swedish neurotech company BRYM has closed a €650k pre-seed round backed by Antler and Lotus Singapore Group. Their product trains focus and attention as a measurable skill using EEG and gamified neurofeedback. The round is a small signal of something larger: cognitive performance may be the next frontier for sportstech.
<p style="font-size:1.05rem;font-weight:500;color:#1e3a5f;line-height:1.7;border-left:4px solid #1e3a5f;padding-left:1.25rem;margin-bottom:2rem;">We congratulate Swedish neurotech company BRYM on closing a €650k pre-seed round, led by Lotus Singapore Group and Antler. The round is modest in size. What it represents may be considerably larger.</p> <p>BRYM describes itself as a "Gym for the Brain." The company is building a platform that combines commercial EEG hardware with gamified neurofeedback to train attention and focus as a measurable, improvable skill — the same way physical training improves endurance or strength. According to the company, early industrial pilots are showing operator error reductions of up to 46%, and they are running initial projects in educational settings. BRYM is also developing a proprietary EEG headband with the stated goal of making cognitive training more universally accessible.</p> <p>The Nordic angle in this round is worth noting. Antler — one of the backers — is a global startup financing platform with Norwegian roots. It was founded in Singapore in 2017 by Magnus Grimeland, a Norwegian entrepreneur, and has since become one of the more active early-stage investors operating across the Nordic region and internationally. The combination of a Swedish neurotech company, a Nordic-origin investor and a Singapore-based lead reflects something real about how Nordic capital and talent now operate: with an international reach that makes national labels less useful than ecosystem thinking.</p> <h2>The physical layer was only the beginning</h2> <p>Sportstech has spent the last decade getting very good at measuring the body. Heart rate, power output, lactate threshold, GPS positioning, load metrics, sleep quality, jump height, ground contact time — the physical performance stack has become remarkably precise. Wearables, tracking systems and data platforms have transformed how athletes, clubs and coaches understand training and recovery.</p> <p>But physical performance has always been only part of what determines the outcome in sport. A defender who reads the game poorly will be beaten despite excellent physical data. A sprinter who loses focus at a critical moment does not win the race their physiology says they should. A tennis player under pressure makes decisions differently than in practice. Elite sport has long known this. The mental and cognitive dimensions of performance — attention, decision-making, reaction speed, stress regulation, emotional control — are as decisive as the physical ones, sometimes more so.</p> <p>What BRYM is building sits precisely in that space. The premise is that attentional capacity is trainable, that neurofeedback can be made accessible and measurable, and that cognitive readiness can be improved the same way physical conditioning is improved. Whether their current product will move into sport specifically is unclear — BRYM's stated focus appears to be broader, covering workplace performance, industrial safety and education. But the underlying logic maps directly onto questions the sportstech world has not yet fully answered.</p> <h2>Active health is part of the sportstech definition</h2> <p>At Norwegian Sport Tech, active health technology is not treated as something adjacent to sportstech — it is part of the definition. The network covers companies and organisations working at the intersection of sport, physical activity, health and technology, and cognitive performance tools fit squarely within that scope. BRYM's current positioning may be broader than sport specifically, with early use cases in industrial safety and education, but their core application — training attentional capacity through measurable neurofeedback — addresses a real and underserved dimension of human performance that sport cares deeply about.</p> <p>The broader point is this: the boundaries between sport, active health, learning and workplace performance are becoming more fluid, and the most interesting companies increasingly serve more than one of these domains simultaneously. For sportstech, this means that the relevant signal landscape extends well beyond what is explicitly labelled as sport. BRYM is one example of a company that matters to this ecosystem even if they do not lead with sport in their own communications.</p> <h2>A Nordic angle worth watching</h2> <p>The Nordic countries have built strong positions in health technology, physical activity infrastructure, educational innovation and data-driven services. Trust is high, public institutions are engaged, and there is genuine appetite for evidence-based approaches to human performance and wellbeing. These are precisely the conditions that favour neurotech and cognitive performance tools — not because of hype, but because they require credible measurement, responsible data handling and integration with professional practice.</p> <p>Antler's involvement in this round also says something about how the Nordic innovation system is evolving. Norwegian-rooted capital backing a Swedish neurotech company with a Singapore-based co-investor is not unusual in 2026. What it reflects is that the relevant network for early-stage companies in this space is genuinely global, and that the Nordics are participants in that network rather than observers of it.</p> <p>Norwegian Sport Tech will follow BRYM's development and the broader cognitive performance space as it matures.</p> <blockquote style="border-left:4px solid #1e3a5f;padding:0.85rem 1.5rem;margin:2.5rem 0;background:#f8fafc;border-radius:0 10px 10px 0;"> <p style="margin:0;font-style:italic;color:#374151;font-size:1.05rem;">If wearables made physical performance measurable, neurotechnology may start making attention and cognitive readiness trainable. For sportstech, that could be one of the next frontiers.</p> </blockquote> <p style="margin-top:2rem;padding-top:1rem;border-top:1px solid #e5e7eb;font-size:0.8rem;color:#9ca3af;">Source: BRYM announcement, Antler portfolio update. Results referenced are reported by the company and have not been independently verified by Norwegian Sport Tech.</p>