This Startup Wants to Get in Your Ears and Watch Your Brain

Konstantin Borodin is an ear nerd. He’s been looking into them, literally and professionally, for more than a decade. Even in social situations, he’ll find his attention drifting lobeward. “Sometimes I get weird looks,” he says.

I met Borodin when he measured my ears and their outer canals for custom-fit buds that can pick up my brain waves. To create a mold, you usually have to fill the ear with a warm waxy substance, but Borodin uses a device called the eFit Scanner that measures its precise dimensions with a laser. The size of an Oculus Quest, the scanner has twin eyepieces and a metal camera nozzle that looks like a long stinger.

I swab my ears with rubbing alcohol—to make them less shiny, he says—and he positions me on a stool. At his urging, I wedge my head into a brace. “It helps to stabilize things,” says Borodin, who is now swooping toward me, gripping the gadget with both hands. He tilts my head and zeroes in on my left ear. “Hold that position,” he says.

“How many of these have you done?” I ask him.