Raymond Loong Ng, 21, and his cofounder are back in Singapore waiting on O-1 visas after their San Francisco-based startup Neural Drive raised $1 million in total funding, including a $250,000 pre-seed from Afore Capital in June. Ng deferred his enrollment at the National University of Singapore, where he'd been accepted into the computer science program. His cofounder took a leave of absence.
They're not waiting for a product to work. They're waiting for permission to work on it in the U.S.
What Neural Drive actually built
The company makes a device that helps paralyzed patients communicate through brainwaves and eye blinks. It started at a medical technology hackathon in 2025 and is set to undergo a clinical trial at a local hospital. That's the whole pitch, and it's enough to have gotten two young founders into Afore Capital's Founders-in-Residence program for two months in San Francisco.
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Ng's path here wasn't linear. Born in Vietnam, he moved to Singapore at age 9, served two years of mandatory military service, and applied to several U.S. colleges. He was rejected by all of them. He and his cofounder started entering competitions together in late 2023, which is how Neural Drive eventually caught Afore's attention.
The O-1 bottleneck nobody prices in
O-1 visas are for individuals with extraordinary ability. They're not a standard startup visa, and they don't come with a timeline founders can plan around. While Ng and his cofounder wait in Singapore, the practical question is where Neural Drive gets built next.
It's not just about convenience. U.S. venture investors typically want portfolio companies headquartered domestically, for tax, regulatory, and operational reasons. Medtech adds another layer: FDA clearance. A prolonged visa delay could push Neural Drive's center of gravity to Singapore, which would make follow-on U.S. fundraising harder and delay access to the American medical device market. That's a real risk for a company whose device needs a clinical trial and then a regulatory pathway.
Why crypto desks should at least glance at this
No, Neural Drive isn't a crypto company. But the same visa friction that pushes a neurotech founder to build from Singapore also pushes Web3 teams toward Singapore, the UAE, and Switzerland. Those jurisdictions have spent years positioning themselves as crypto-friendly, and every founder who relocates because of immigration friction makes them a little more central to where blockchain and AI innovation actually happens.
There's a second-order effect too. Neural Drive's device generates neural data, which raises consent, privacy, and ownership questions that decentralized data projects have been pitching solutions for. If neurotech scales, demand for user-controlled data storage grows. Crypto projects in that space would benefit, though it's far from guaranteed.
For now, Bitcoin is trading around $83,518 with a market cap of $1.68 trillion and dominance high enough that altcoins are underperforming. The Fear & Greed index sits at 69 — greed, but not euphoria. Low volume suggests traders aren't chasing anything hard this week. A human-interest startup story isn't going to move that.
What happens when the visa comes through — or doesn't
The next concrete thing is the O-1 adjudication itself. If approved, Ng and his cofounder return to San Francisco and Neural Drive proceeds toward its clinical trial with its U.S. base intact. If denied or delayed further, the company faces a choice: wait, or rebuild from Singapore. Neither is fatal at this stage. Both change who gets to fund it and where the IP eventually sits.
Ng is 21. He has time. The visa queue doesn't care.
