New York Angels Lead $1.8 Million Pre-Seed for Janus Labs, Which Wants to Read Your Dog's Brain Without Touching It
Janus Labs AI, an alum of SOSV's IndieBio New York accelerator, raised a $1.8 million pre-seed round led by New York Angels for contactless technology that measures brain activity in dogs and cats. What the round shows about angel investing and pet tech in New York.
NEW YORK — The pet-tech aisle is crowded with GPS collars and activity trackers. Janus Labs AI is betting that the next valuable signal isn’t where a dog went or how many steps it took, but what is happening in its brain, and that it can measure that without putting anything on the animal.
Janus Labs AI has closed a $1.8 million pre-seed round led by New York Angels, with participation from Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater New York, SkyRiver Ventures and Kinisis Ventures, according to the company’s announcement published Nov. 3. The round brings its total raised to $2.6 million, Dealroom reported.
What Janus Is Building
The company says its patented “Neuro AI” technology measures brain activity in dogs and cats without contact, then combines it with physiological data. AI software interprets each animal’s patterns to monitor physical and mental well-being, flag possible early health changes and recommend personalized care and enrichment activities. Coverage of the round by Drovus World describes the approach as removing the need for electrodes or sedation during measurement.
“We’re not interested in building another pet tracker,” co-founder and CEO Shaun Westbrook said in the announcement. “Our technology enables, for the first time, a real understanding of what’s going on inside our pets’ minds.”
The company’s longer-term ambitions go further: it describes a vision of bridging “the interspecies communication gap,” with possible applications in infant health monitoring.
The Credentials, and the Caveats
According to the announcement, Janus holds nine U.S. patents and has five published human studies, plus what it calls advanced clinical validation across multiple dog breeds. It completed the 2026 SOSV NY/IndieBio accelerator, won Best Product at The Ventures Startup Awards during NY Tech Week 2026, and was picked as a top 10 startup at the SF Tech Week Consumer AI Pitch Fest. New York Angels lists Janus Labs in its portfolio with a Manhattan address on Broadway.
It’s still a pre-seed company, and outside coverage has been measured. Dealroom’s write-up notes that “the concept remains speculative” and that the round “is not yet evidence the technology works at scale or has established demand.” Drovus World reported that details on commercialization timelines, clinical validation and regulatory pathways hadn’t been confirmed in available materials. We couldn’t find announced pricing or a launch date for a consumer product.
Who Wrote the Checks
The investor list is a good snapshot of how early-stage money works in New York.
New York Angels, which led the round, is an angel investor group that pools individual investors to back early companies. Tom Hirschfeld, who invests with both New York Angels and HBS Alumni Angels of Greater New York, pointed to his earlier investment in pet longevity company Loyal Animal Health. “Janus brings a valuable new dimension to that progress, using neural technology to give pet owners insights they’ve never had access to before,” he said.
SkyRiver Ventures general partner Hyuk-Jeen Suh, whom the announcement describes as the founder and former head of Samsung Ventures’ East Coast office, said he sees “strong potential in its proprietary technology.” Kinisis Ventures co-founder Andreas Panayi said the firm looks for founders “willing to build the hard, unproven layer of a category rather than the easy, overcrowded, and predictable one.”
Lessons for New York Founders
Angel groups can lead, not just follow. Many founders treat angels as filler around a lead venture fund. Here, an organized angel network set the round and brought in an alumni angel group and two small funds behind it. If you’re raising a first round under $2 million, New York’s angel networks are worth approaching as a potential lead.
Accelerators and pitch awards add up. Janus stacked an IndieBio program, a Tech Week award and a pitch-fest selection before this round. None of them is a substitute for traction, but together they give early investors outside validation to point to.
Defensibility matters in a crowded category. Every investor quote in the announcement draws the same contrast: Janus isn’t another activity tracker. Its patents and published studies are the core of that argument. In a crowded market, founders need a clear answer to “why can’t a bigger company copy this?”
Be ready for the skeptics. For hard-tech consumer products, investors and press will ask for proof. Founders should be prepared to show validation data, a regulatory plan if one applies, and a realistic path to a product people will pay for.
The Bottom Line
Janus Labs is an early, ambitious bet on a new kind of pet health data, backed by a group of New York angels who have seen this market before. Whether the technology delivers is still an open question. The round shows that New York’s angel community is still willing to lead on unusual ideas, and that founders who can explain why their product is different can find backers here.