International Brain Laboratory

What International Brain Laboratory does

The International Brain Laboratory (IBL) is a nonprofit virtual research collaboration unifying 22 neuroscience groups distributed across the United States, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, and Portugal. Founded in 2017 with founding grants from the Simons Foundation and Wellcome Trust, IBL operates under open-science principles, releasing all publications, datasets, software, and protocols freely to the global neuroscience research community with no commercial pricing. Its research mission is to produce standardized, reproducible measurements of brain-wide neural activity during decision-making in mice, addressing a scale and complexity problem that no single laboratory can solve alone. The organization is sustained by multi-year grant funding rather than commercial revenue: Simons Foundation core funding runs through 2030, Wellcome Trust community engagement funding through 2028, and the NIH BRAIN Initiative provides project support through a U19 award.

IBL's technical platform combines large-scale Neuropixels electrophysiology with a standardized head-fixed behavioral decision-making task for mice, integrated through a modular data architecture built around ONE (Open Neurophysiology Environment) and DataJoint. The organization has released an extensive open-source tool stack covering the full research workflow: Lightning Pose for markerless animal pose estimation via semi-supervised learning and Bayesian ensembling; ibl-sorter for standardized spike sorting at scale with per-stage quality control; the ONE API and Alyx database for data management; Pinpoint and Urchin for trajectory planning and 3D anatomical rendering; and Datoviz for high-performance GPU-accelerated visualization. The September 2025 publication of two Nature papers, presenting the first complete brain-wide map of decision-making at cellular resolution (621,733+ neurons across 279 brain areas in 139 mice), is the platform's flagship scientific output and challenges the hierarchical view of brain function by showing decision-making is distributed across many regions.

IBL's go-to-market is community-led rather than commercial. Engagement is driven through scientific workshops (COSYNE, Neuropixels courses, pre-conference Brainhack hackathons), open-access publications in top-tier journals, GitHub-hosted open-source tools, interactive web data explorers, and an educational course repository. New partner projects are onboarded via the "IBL Core" model, in which external research groups adopt IBL infrastructure, data standards, and analysis pipelines. The strategic risk profile is therefore driven by grant concentration — three principal funders underwrite the operation — rather than customer or sales-pipeline concentration.

Name

International Brain Laboratory

Legal name

International Brain Laboratory

Website

https://internationalbrainlab.com

Company type

Private

Founded year

2017

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

The International Brain Laboratory is a nonprofit virtual research collaboration of 22 neuroscience groups that produces open-source tools, standardized protocols, and large-scale brain-wide electrophysiology datasets to study decision-making circuits in mice.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Cold Spring Harbor

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Research Grant Funding: IBL is funded by major research grants from Wellcome Trust, Simons Foundation (five-year funding through 2030), NIH BRAIN Initiative (U19 award), and National Institutes of Health. All data, tools, and publications are released freely under open science principles rather than commercial revenue generation.

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

International Brain Laboratory (IBL) is a nonprofit virtual laboratory that unifies 22 neuroscience groups worldwide to study brain-wide circuits underlying decision-making using standardized Neuropixels electrophysiology in head-fixed mice. It produces and openly distributes an ecosystem of open-source software tools, standardized experimental and analysis protocols, and large-scale brain-wide neural datasets (notably the Brainwide Map covering over 621,733 neurons across 279 brain areas) under open-science principles at no cost.

Product overview

The International Brain Laboratory operates as an open-science neuroscience collaboration that provides a comprehensive ecosystem of open-source software tools, standardized protocols, and large-scale neural datasets. The portfolio includes specialized tools for video-based behavioral analysis (Lightning Pose), electrophysiology data processing and visualization (ibl-sorter, ViewEphys QC, Electrophysiology Alignment GUI, Datoviz), trajectory planning (Pinpoint, Urchin), and data management (ONE, Alyx, brainbox). These tools are designed to work together within the IBL data architecture to enable reproducible, large-scale neuroscience research across distributed laboratories worldwide.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Lightning Pose Cloud-native open-source tool for markerless animal pose estimation via semi-supervised learning and Bayesian ensembling, tracking pupils, paws, tongue, and nose across heterogeneous videos from multiple experimental labs.
• ibl-sorter (IBL Spike Sorting Pipeline) A modular spike sorting pipeline built to process over a thousand Neuropixels recordings collected across multiple labs, with per-stage quality control tools, systematic visualization, and sorting-performance scoring.
• ONE (Open Neurophysiology Environment) Data-sharing standard and Python API for neurophysiology data that enables searching and loading standardized datasets stored on local machines or remote servers.
• Electrophysiology Alignment GUI Desktop tool to align histology tracks using electrophysiology features, enabling researchers to map recording sites onto a common coordinate framework.
• Pinpoint Web-based trajectory planning tool for multi-probe electrophysiology and injections in an interactive 3D environment.
• Urchin Python package for rendering electrophysiology data in its original 3D anatomical context.
• brainbox Python library of independent analysis functions oriented toward behavior and neurophysiology.
• Alyx User-friendly database for neuroscience data and colony management.
• Datoviz 2D and 3D scientific visualization library designed for scale and performance, leveraging GPU for high rendering performance.
• Electrophysiology Mapper Interactive website allowing exploration of data collected across the brain using multiple brain projections.
• Brainwide Map Dataset Comprehensive brain-wide neural activity dataset covering 621,733 neurons across 279 brain areas in 139 mice, enabling unprecedented exploration of distributed neural computations during decision-making.
• Standardized Behavior Protocol Standardized task and protocols for reproducible measurement of decision-making in mice across multiple laboratories, with 5 million mouse choices in a publicly available database.
• Reproducible Electrophysiology Protocol Standardized electrophysiology procedures and datasets enabling reproducible results across multiple labs, with shared behavioral task and experimental apparatus.
• UnitRefine Community Toolbox Community toolbox for automated spike sorting curation, designed to address inconsistencies in spike sorting across heterogeneous datasets collected from multiple labs.

Named customers1 record

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

Yes

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability5 records

Feature6 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered minor.

• International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF)minorStrategic or Co-development PartnerINCF is listed as a supporting organization, providing infrastructure support and hosting IBL training materials on their platform.
• Neuroinformatics Unit (NIU) at UCLminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerJoint collaboration with Adam Tyson on building general-purpose software infrastructure for systems neuroscience, developing PoseInterface and multiphoton imaging frameworks.
• Allen InstituteminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerCollaboration on developing standardized electrophysiology atlas and contributing data to community tools. Plans to incorporate Allen Institute data into the atlas.

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Direct peers

• Allen Institute for Brain Science: Nonprofit neuroscience research organization producing large-scale brain atlases, standardized datasets, and open-source tools (e.g., Allen Brain Atlas). Direct peer to IBL given shared mission of producing community brain-mapping resources at scale and IBL's existing collaboration with Allen Institute.
• Janelia Research Campus (HHMI): HHMI's research campus focused on large-scale basic neuroscience, computational neuroscience, and tool development for imaging and electrophysiology. Direct peer to IBL's standardized, large-scale approach and similar emphasis on developing open tools for the neuroscience community.
• Champalimaud Foundation (Centre for the Unknown): Lisbon-based nonprofit research center running large-scale systems neuroscience programs (with IBL Core staff in Lisbon). Comparable as a nonprofit neuroscience research institution focused on brain circuits and behavior.

Regional players

• Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute (Stanford): Stanford's interdisciplinary neuroscience institute supporting large-scale collaborative neuroscience research. Comparable given shared emphasis on understanding brain circuits underlying behavior with substantial centralized funding.
• Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics: Max Planck Institute where IBL PI Peter Dayan is based, focused on theoretical and systems neuroscience, decision-making, and neural computation. Comparable given shared scientific mission and overlapping research community.
• Kavli Institute for Brain Science (Columbia): Columbia University institute focused on neural circuits and behavior where IBL PI Larry Abbott is based. Comparable as a leading academic neuroscience research institute addressing similar systems-neuroscience questions.
• Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute (Columbia): Columbia neuroscience institute where IBL PI Larry Abbott and other IBL-affiliated researchers are based. Comparable as a large academic neuroscience research organization studying brain circuits and behavior.

Broad incumbents

• Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory: Major nonprofit neuroscience research institution where IBL is geographically co-located and where IBL PI Tatiana Engel is based. Comparable as a leading neuroscience research org with overlapping mission in systems and computational neuroscience.
• Flatiron Institute (Simons Foundation): Research division of IBL's primary funder (Simons Foundation), operating large-scale computational and scientific research centers including the Center for Computational Neuroscience. Comparable as a sister large-scale scientific collaboration model funded by the same foundation.
• Salk Institute for Biological Studies: Major nonprofit basic research institute with substantial systems neuroscience research programs. Comparable given shared nonprofit model, large-scale basic research mission, and emphasis on understanding brain function.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/int-brain-lab
• Xx.com/IntlBrainLab
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/international-brain-lab

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

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M&A

Investments

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Frequently asked questions about International Brain Laboratory