Ampa has raised $8.5m and initiated the US rollout of its transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) system for treating major depressive disorder (MDD), months after emerging from stealth.
The US-based company’s Pre-A funding round was led by Nexus NeuroTech Ventures, with participation from other VCs, including Satori Capital and Morningside Ventures, as well as Ampa’s existing investors, which include individual entrepreneurs.
The round brings the company’s total funding to $18m.
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Since emerging from stealth in June 2025 and following US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clearance of its Ampa One system in February 2025, the company is now launching the TMS system across the US.
With a portable form factor, Ampa One is designed to make advanced brain stimulation more accessible and easier for clinicians to deliver. The non-invasive, camera-guided system stimulates brain regions associated with emotional resilience and mood regulation to improve the symptoms of MDD.
Ampa CEO Don Vaughn said: “We’ve never been more depressed yet more medicated. People deserve new options.
“Ampa One was built to give clinicians a practical, portable, affordable tool that expands patient access to this lifesaving technology.”
Ampa is also developing its Ampa One protocol, an approach that condenses a traditional multi-week TMS for treatment resistant depression treatment into a single day.
However, Ampa will need to gain a protocol expansion from the FDA for this rapid acting treatment approach to be viable. Such an expansion was recently secured by BrainsWay, enabling the company’s previous four-week daily treatment sessions before follow-up visits with its Deep TMS system to be condensed into an acute phase of six treatment days.
Research indicates that MDD affects around 21 million individuals in the US while around 2.8 million experience treatment resistant depression (TRD), with 13% of this total affected by MDD.
While TMS has been around for some time, it is still viewed as a highly affective modality for treating MDD and TRD. Other approaches for treating depression and other mental health conditions such as anxiety, include deep brain stimulation (DBS). In March, Abbott initiated its TRANSCEND trial investigating the DBS system for TRD. The medtech giant’s system received a breakthrough device designation from the FDA in 2022.
