A California company has created a headpiece that allows mind-reading without causing brain damage

California startup Sabi launches a “mind‑reading hat”

For most people the idea of brain chip‑insertion sounds like a horror movie, but in some cases it becomes a necessity – for example, for patients with spinal cord injuries. Even healthy individuals can benefit from neural implants: they make working with computers, AI and general electronics easier. The main obstacle is surgical intervention to install sensors; without “holes in the skull” such an approach is impossible.

Recently a California startup called Sabi emerged from the shadows (as Wired reports). The company has developed a non‑invasive brain‑computer interface that looks like a regular knitted cap or baseball hat. The device reads a mental monologue and converts it into text on a screen, allowing the user to “type” with thoughts without speaking words. This makes interaction with technology direct and intuitive, opening the way for new “cyborgs”.

How the technology works
Sabi uses classic electroencephalography (EEG). Inside the cap are placed between 70,000 and 100,000 miniature sensors that capture the brain’s electrical activity through skin and bone. Such a large number of sensors compensates for the weak signals normally obtained with only 10–100 sensors in traditional EEG.

However, even the same mental phrase produces different EEG patterns in different people. To make the “hat” work out of the box, developers recruit hundreds of volunteers and use artificial intelligence to collect data and fine‑tune it for each individual user.

Goals and timeline
The startup’s immediate goal is to create a system capable of decoding spoken thoughts at about 30 words per minute. As users adapt to their brains, typing speeds should increase. Once people see the possibility of communicating with a computer without surgical intervention, they will be ready to queue up for the novelty.

The company has already attracted investment from Khosla Ventures and plans to bring the “mind‑reading hat” to market by the end of this year. An additional baseball‑hat version with sensors is also in development. There are no prototypes or demo videos yet, which raises skepticism among critics, but investors have likely already seen early results.

Bottom line: Sabi offers a revolutionary way for humans and computers to interact without surgery – just put on the hat, think, and the system turns thoughts into text. If the technology lives up to expectations, it could become a mass gadget for anyone who wants quick and convenient communication with digital devices.