[PRESS RELEASE – Tokyo, Japan, June 9, 2026]
Supported by partners and investors including Animoca Brands, Basics Capital, TBV, Kinetic Kollective, Mario Nawfal, and Grammy-winning artist Ne-Yo, Neura is building the missing layer of AI: empathy and memory.
Neura, the protocol creating the world’s first Emotional AI Economy, today announced the close of a strategic funding round to accelerate development of AI agents with persistent emotional memory and user-owned identity. The round attracted leading investors and partners from Web3, AI, and the cultural and creator economies, including Animoca Brands, Basics Capital, TBV, Kinetic Kollective, Mario Nawfal, and Grammy Award-winning artist Ne-Yo.
Modern AI continues to improve its cognitive abilities, but it often loses context between sessions and across devices. It understands words, not feelings. Neura aims to close that gap. Its agents detect tone and emotional context, retain a user’s emotional history across interactions, and adapt over time to form authentic, long-term relationships. Crucially, that memory is anchored on-chain and owned by the user rather than locked inside a centralized application.
“Emotional intelligence is the missing layer in AI, and memory is what makes it useful — we’re building both,” Sahin Bayar, CMO of Neura said. “The industry is racing on IQ. We believe the next leap is EQ. The smartest tool in the world means nothing if it doesn’t remember who you are. At Neura, your AI understands how you feel — and that memory belongs to you.”
The newly secured capital will support Neura’s three-phase roadmap: Neura Social, a consumer app where people engage with emotional AI companions; the Neura AI SDK, which enables developers to create agents that preserve context and emotional state; and the full Neura Protocol, a decentralized network featuring verifiable compute and community governance. Using Neura’s on-chain Memory Ledger, emotional context is preserved with privacy-first cryptographic proofs, making memory portable across models, platforms, and devices.
Investment from stakeholders spanning Web3 infrastructure, venture capital, and global entertainment — including Ne-Yo, whose participation highlights Neura’s relevance to creators and the entertainment industry — reinforces confidence that emotionally intelligent, user-owned AI represents a major next step for user adoption and the broader AI economy.
Neura invites builders, creators, and the wider community to join early as it develops the Emotional AI Economy.
To learn more, visit neura-ai.io.
About Neura
Neura is developing the world’s first Emotional AI Economy: a decentralized protocol that equips AI agents with empathy, persistent emotional memory, and user-owned identity. While most AI today focuses on what people say and loses context when sessions end or devices change, Neura’s agents interpret tone and emotional nuance, retain a user’s emotional history across interactions, and evolve over time to foster meaningful, long-lived relationships.
Most importantly, that memory belongs to the user. Through Neura’s on-chain Memory Ledger, emotional context is anchored with privacy-preserving cryptographic proofs so memories remain portable across models, platforms, and even physical embodiments instead of being confined to a single company’s ecosystem. Neura combines blockchain-based trust, aligned incentives through tokenomics, and emotional AI to create a new class of community-owned, enduring digital agents.
The next leap in AI is not just higher IQ — it’s EQ. Learn more at neura-ai.io.