# Paul Le Floch

> Paul Le Floch is the co-founder and CEO of Axoft, a Cambridge neurotechnology company building brain implants out of a material so soft it behaves like brain tissue. A Harvard-trained materials scientist and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, he bet that the way to read the brain better was not to borrow chips from the semiconductor industry but to invent a new material from scratch. The result, Fleuron, is up to thousands of times softer than conventional probes yet can carry over 1,000 sensors. Axoft has now implanted its device in 11 patients and raised a $55M Series A to push toward FDA trials.

- **Role:** Co-founder & CEO at Axoft
- **Organizations:** Axoft, Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
- **From:** France
- **Nationality:** French
- **Education:** Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science, Harvard University (SEAS), Bachelor's and Master's degrees, France (bachelor's and master's)
- **Known for:** Co-founded Axoft and grew it to 11 successful human implantations, Invented/commercialized Fleuron, a brain-tissue-mimicking implant material up to thousands of times softer than polyimide, Named to the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 Science list

## Career timeline

- **2016** — Joins Harvard SEAS to pursue a PhD, initially in Zhigang Suo's lab studying stretchable electronics
- **2017** — Switches labs to become the first graduate student of bioengineering professor Jia Liu
- **2021** — Defends PhD in mechanical engineering and materials science; raises nearly $1M pre-seed and co-founds Axoft with Jia Liu and Tianyang Ye
- **2022** — Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Science list; receives MRS Graduate Student Gold Award
- **2023** — Axoft research published in Nature (December)
- **2025** — Completes first-in-human cases at The Panama Clinic; second Nature paper published (June)
- **2026** — Axoft closes an oversubscribed $55M Series A led by C.P. Group Innovation (April 29)

## Achievements

- Co-founded Axoft and grew it to 11 successful human implantations
- Invented/commercialized Fleuron, a brain-tissue-mimicking implant material up to thousands of times softer than polyimide
- Named to the 2022 Forbes 30 Under 30 Science list
- Received the 2021 Materials Research Society Graduate Student Gold Award
- Raised nearly $1M in pre-seed funding while still completing his PhD
- Closed an oversubscribed $55M Series A in 2026 (total funding $60M+)
- Co-authored neural-interface research published in Nature (2023 and 2025)

## Latest updates

- **2026-04** — Axoft secured an oversubscribed $55M Series A led by C.P. Group Innovation to fund global clinical trials, US regulatory approval, and a GMP manufacturing facility.
- **2025-08** — Harvard Gazette profiled Axoft's scar-free soft brain implants; company reported 11 patient implantations and a 2027 FDA trial target.

## Links

- Website: https://axoft.us
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/plefloch/
- Twitter/X: https://x.com/paullefloch

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/paul-floch
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-06-03