Technologies

I Scanned My Brain With Headphones to Gauge My Stress While Gaming

Gamers might soon be able to scan their brains using specialized commercial headphones to get midmatch snapshots of mental performance.

Up in a hotel room during CES 2026, I sat down at a gaming laptop to play a target-practice program. After testing my first-person shooter skills, I put on headphones lined with capacitive bands that read my brain activity, and on the laptop screen, a visualization of my mental stress slowly diminished as I did some relaxed breathing. I tried the target practice again and, voila, I did better.

Neurable, the company behind the software, has been scanning brains for a decade to research soldiers’ brain activity for the US Army. The company recently released its brain-computer interfaces as over-ear headphones like the ones I wore. But at this year’s CES, it showcased a new frontier for their research: improving gamers’ performance by showing their brain activity during intense play sessions.

It’s part of a larger trend toward software and hardware designed to elevate gameplay. But unlike other solutions, like Microsoft’s Copilot for Gaming and Razer’s Project Ava, which act like AI assistants to help you through a tough level, Neurable’s insights to gamers don’t rely on AI that watches how you play. Instead, it shows players what’s happening in their brains so they can refocus and improve their gameplay.

Neurable isn’t releasing the software powering these brain insights — Prime and Broadcast — publicly. Instead, it’s looking for partners to pair that software with products that have BCI contacts built in, like the Master & Dynamic headphones I wore. While those come with focus-tracking and brain-health features that tell you when to take breaks, neither of them, nor the Neurable-powered HyperX headphones announced at CES 2026, has the full brain-scanning-while-gaming software that I was pitched.

Neurable’s purpose and design are intriguing. Who doesn’t want brain insights to improve their gaming performance? But it depends on which companies partner with Neurable to release gadgets using their conductive tech. Ideally, the company wants every Neurable device to have access to all the focus-tracking, mental performance software it releases.

A quick sample of brain-training for better gaming

Neurable’s biggest goal with gamers is to reduce their cognitive load by visualizing it, both in warmups and in the middle of tense matches. I experienced the former in person, but only saw screenshot examples for the latter, which is implemented in software called Broadcast. That platform brings up additional gauges on-screen that let players see how their brain is doing if they’re frustrated or just need a moment to chill out. Both software proposals will seemingly be finalized when Neurable finds a company to partner up with to make a bespoke BCI-packing product (headphones, earbuds, smart glasses or otherwise).

«We essentially are able to help you visualize those kinds of things, like focus, your cognitive load and what’s impacting you, and then be able to not only provide you the feedback, but then also enable you to provide [it] to your streaming [viewers],» said Ramses Alcaide, co-founder and CEO of Neurable.

Neurable has refined its warm-up procedure that preps gamer brains for better performance: its Prime software, which I experienced in the Vegas hotel room. Its simple improvement circuit had me trying out the Gridshot exercise in the popular target practice software Aimlabs, in which I shot randomly appearing spheres for a full minute. Then I popped open Prime, which measured my brain activity and visualized it as a large globe of interconnected dots that slowly shrank as I manually calmed my breathing. After that, I tried Gridshot again, and my overall score improved around 4,000 points, my reaction time went down by 44 milliseconds, and I shot 10 more targets — a solid improvement.

That’s about in line with the results Neurable’s seen with its test samples. In a white paper published shortly before CES, 25 players surveyed through 34 of these test sessions reduced their reaction time by about 40ms on average, Alcaide said, as well as increased the number of targets hit.

«It’s really key, because normally gamers have to choose between reaction time and target hit, but because we’re creating this capacity and cognitive load, it’s actually enabled them to essentially improve both areas,» Alcaide said.

Could I have improved just as much if I had closed my eyes and done a simple breathing exercise instead? Possibly. But all the studies that Neurable research scientist Alicia Howell-Munson pored over showed that both focus and cognitive load affect in-game performance — not just reducing stress, but locking in.

«So the thing with just meditation is that generally, it will relax you. It may not increase your focus, though. Or if it’s increasing your focus, you might be stressed trying to hone in on that,» Howell-Munson said.

In any case, I appreciated having Prime’s visual globe to watch shrink as I calmed myself — and to make sure it was actually responsive to my mental load, I intentionally flooded my brain with thoughts about all my deadlines and stressors (of which CES had many). The condensed ball started to expand a bit, presumably reacting to my exasperation. I didn’t tell Alcaide that I was doing it intentionally, and he chalked it up to the stress gamers might feel when getting close to breaking a record or clinching a match.

«So [Prime] helps you practice those moments and manage your emotion and your mental load so that when you’re actually doing it, you can do better,» Alcaide said. «All of that is to give you feedback on your brain because it’s so hard to feel it out yourself.»

That real-time feedback is the core of Neurable’s value proposition. While there’s obvious benefit for high-performance players like esports professionals who would seriously benefit from trimming 40ms off their response time, casual players could harness that feedback not to improve their gameplay, but their enjoyment. For gamers who don’t have much time to play, it can be hard to leave life’s stress behind and be mentally present during their leisure time.

«What if I can maximize the hour that I have, feel great about how well I played, and at least know I did the best I could, given the limitations I have and be able to do that consistently?» Alcaide said. With Neurable, even players who aren’t concerned about their performance can recenter and enjoy the limited low-stakes play they can fit into their days.

Neurable’s pivot to measure gamer brains

Neurable was founded in 2016 as a research group at the University of Michigan and worked on brain-input in VR and AR before pivoting to BCIs in conventional wearables.

When considering «measuring brain activity,» I think of science fiction-style big metal cages that wrap around my cranium that connect to my forehead via big coin-sized conductors affixed to my skin with a dollop of gooey gel. Neurable’s been working on less onerous methods of measuring brain activity: using conductive stripes on the earcups of headphones, which take readings from other parts of the brain than the conductor-and-gel method (specifically, my frontal lobe through my ears). Then, Neurable’s software uses AI to infer similar data and extrapolate brain activity.

In that sense, they aren’t taking quite as accurate readings as the conductor-and-gel method, though they say they get close: in a validation paper reporting on a study done with the US Army, Neurable’s tech had a 90% correlation coefficient compared with conventional full-scalp electroencephalograms, getting the majority of the signal, Alcaide said. Plus, it doesn’t take as long — rather than sit for an hour waiting for my data to calibrate, Alcaide had me do a few simple exercises while wearing an over-ear headset to get preliminary readings that were matched with preexisting models.

Neurable says it has years of experience with Department of Defense contracts, specifically in researching the brain activity of military veterans. The company worked with the US Army to help develop its proprietary brain metrics to measure soldiers’ mental performance and developed its cognitive load algorithm while working with the Singapore Air Force, Alcaide said.

When I asked why they didn’t transition into a more conventional use for brain reading in tech, such as providing insights for accessories like health wearables, they said their pivot to gaming was organic. Many of the company’s staff are gamers themselves, playing intense games like the strategy title StarCraft 2, and examining player activity is a natural pivot.

Gamer health metrics are also a less proven field than generic health wearables, which are saturated with devices that track things like heart rate and blood pressure. In contrast, gamers are often tech-savvy enthusiasts who are early adopters of the next big technology. They spend a lot of money to get the hardware edge with faster graphics processing units and more RAM — it stands to reason that they’d want insights on how to improve the performance of their own fleshy processing, too.

If I had to guess, I’d expect gamers to prefer objective data about what’s going on in their brain rather than to get hints and tips from AI assistants watching their gameplay. But whether gamers understand and embrace Neurable’s proprietary brain metrics, like brain battery and focus, is tough to predict. These measurements are created by the company, and players will have to adapt to understanding what they mean.

For instance, if they see their brain battery is low, will they stop playing for the day? If they notice their focus meter indicates they’re stressed and angry (or in gamer parlance, «tilted»), will they take a break to cool down?

How measuring gamer brains can lead to more mental performance insights

Neurable’s big focus is on bringing brain insights to gamers through tried-and-true headphones, but it’s worked toward other formats. In its recent work for the US Department of Defense, it used helmet-mounted brain scanning to measure microtraumatic brain injuries when in the vicinity of explosive blasts. It’s something that could be integrated into consumer products, like measuring impacts in sports.

What it is enthusiastic about is bringing brain scanning to products other than over-ear headphones. In fact, Neurable researcher Howell-Munson prefers earbuds so much that it’s already figured out how to integrate the company’s brain-scanning tech into that gadget category, but is waiting for a partnership with the right device-maker.

While earbuds are likely their next frontier, Neurable is also looking into applying its tech to smart glasses, too — presumably, the company could use the stems and ear hooks as conductive surfaces to read brain activity. That’s even less surface area touching the head than the earcups of headphones, so it leads me to wonder how good its AI models can be to accurately extrapolate brain activity from potentially limited data.

Bringing brain scanning to earbuds also makes me wonder about getting those mental insights in other parts of my everyday life, beyond the computer desk. Jessica Randazza-Pade, Neurable’s vice president of marketing, noted that the insights could be helpful in her competitive races; I’ve got a half-marathon coming up in a couple of weeks, where reminders of my slipping mental focus could help me zone back in during my long run. I’ve already got plenty of fitness metrics that my Apple Watch Ultra feeds me, but they can only tell me so much about my circulation and blood oxygen — not so much about when my mental stress spikes and it’s time to take a slow, chill break.

With only a few minutes of testing Neurable’s brain activity visualization tech, I can’t speak to the future it’s working toward — only that I feel a lot of gamers would want to try it out for themselves. Whether that comes sooner or later depends on one of the biggest computer accessory companies on the market, Alcaide teased: Before players can actually get their hands on Neurable’s brain-scanning-while-gaming software, «We need to close our negotiations with HP,» he said.

Technologies

Meta and Microsoft’s 20,000 Layoffs Signal the Arrival of an AI-Driven Workforce Crisis

Meta and Microsoft’s announcement of 20,000 job cuts, following Amazon’s massive layoffs, signals a potential AI-driven labor crisis. Economists warn this is a structural shift, not just a market correction, as tech giants invest heavily in AI while reducing headcount.

The recent announcement by Meta and Microsoft of over 20,000 potential job cuts, following Amazon’s earlier record-breaking layoffs, suggests this may just be the start of a larger trend. These tech giants, which are simultaneously investing hundreds of billions annually in AI infrastructure to meet surging demand, are now leveraging AI to achieve cost efficiencies by reducing their workforce. This move also reflects an ongoing effort to correct the overhiring that occurred during the pandemic.
Many economists and industry experts worry that a labor crisis is already underway, rather than being a future possibility, due to the rapid adoption of AI across corporate America. According to Layoffs.fyi, more than 92,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026 alone, bringing the total since 2020 to nearly 900,000.
«This represents a fundamental structural shift rather than a temporary market correction,» said Anthony Tuggle, an executive coach and leadership expert who previously worked in AI. «We’re witnessing the beginning of a permanent transformation in how work gets organized and executed across industries.»
Job anxiety has been on the rise since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in late 2022, showing the expansive capabilities of chatbots powered by new AI models. Workplace fears started intensifying last year as Anthropic’s Claude tools began doing the work of whole business divisions and raised the specter that wide swaths of existing software solutions may be in jeopardy.
Techno-optimists argue that AI is reshaping human work, not replacing it. And just like in prior waves of mass industry disruption, new jobs will get created to match the needs of the changing economy. Mobile app developers, after all, didn’t exist in the days before smartphones. And what use were IT administrators before we created servers?
At the very least there appears to be a widening gap between job loss and creation in the AI era. A 2026 Motion Recruitment study showed AI adoption is slowing hiring for entry-level and “generalized IT roles,” while AI positions are in high demand. Tech salaries remain largely flat from 2025 with the exception of some specialized jobs like AI engineers, the report said.
Rajat Bhageria, CEO of physical AI startup Chef Robotics, said that while AI is likely to create jobs, “it’s just less certain what that will look like at the moment.”
“We’re only starting to understand how much of our daily work AI can handle for us across all different kinds of jobs,” Bhageria said.
Meta only hinted at AI in its announcement on Thursday. The company told employees in a memo that it plans to lay off 10% of its workforce, equaling about 8,000 jobs, with cuts beginning on May 20, “all part of our continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making.” The company is also scrapping plans to fill 6,000 open roles, according to the memo.
Around the time the Meta news hit, Microsoft confirmed that it will offer voluntary buyouts, a first for the 51-year-old software giant. About 7% of U.S. employees are eligible, according to a person familiar with the plans who asked not to be named because the number isn’t being made public. With about 125,000 U.S. employees, that could add up to 8,750 cuts.
Nike too?
Tech jobs aren’t only at risk in the tech industry.
Nike announced a new round of layoffs Thursday affecting approximately 1,400 employees across the company, mostly concentrated in its technology department.
“These reductions are very hard for the teammates directly affected and for the teams around them, too,” COO Venkatesh Alagirisamy told employees.
Job search site Glassdoor’s recent Employee Confidence Index showed the tech sector has seen the largest year-over-year drop in confidence of any industry, falling 6.8 percentage points in March from a year earlier to 47.2%.
Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor’s chief economist, said fewer people are quitting their jobs, fearing an unstable market, a dynamic that comes at a cost to employee morale and career satisfaction. It also means even more job cuts.
“Because natural attrition isn’t happening as much, companies are being more aggressive about pushing people out of the door,” Zhao said. “Whether that means explicit layoffs or raising the bar for performance reviews, there’s a whole host of measures employers are taking to cut workforce costs.”
Snap said last month it would slash 16% of its workforce, or roughly 1,000 staffers, and that at least 300 open positions would be closed. CEO Evan Spiegel cited AI-driven efficiencies in a letter to staff. Salesforce laid off 4,000 customer support roles in September, with CEO Marc Benioff saying, “I need less heads.”
Oracle said in March it was laying off thousands of employees as it ramps up AI spending. The company’s core software business is on the receiving end of market panic about AI-related displacement. Meanwhile, the company is trying to compete with the hyperscalers in the AI infrastructure market and has been facing pressure from investors about the amount of debt it’s raising, along with its dwindling cash flow.
Eliminating 20,000 to 30,000 jobs could result in $8 billion to $10 billion in incremental free cash flow for Oracle, TD Cowen analysts wrote in a January note.
Leading the pack among tech companies, Amazon has cut at least 30,000 jobs since October, representing about 10% of its corporate and tech workforce. Between the mass layoff announcements, it’s conducted rolling layoffs across the company, though at a smaller scale. Google has also carried out small but regular cuts since 2023.
But the spending continues.
Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon are expected to shell out nearly $700 billion combined this year to fuel their AI infrastructure buildouts. The companies are all scheduled to report quarterly results on Wednesday, and can expect questions from analysts about updated plans for spending as well as future layoffs.
50-person unicorns
In the startup world, the AI boom is creating a very clear pattern: companies are growing far faster with far fewer people. Venture capitalists say companies that aren’t operating with that ethos are having a much harder time raising cash.
Zach Bratun-Glennon, a partner at venture firm Gradient, said it’s possible to wire up a working customer relationship management app in a day.
“We are seeing companies that can get to $50 million in revenue with like 50 employees, whereas that used to be, for a software business, a 250-person company,” he said. “Do I think there are going to be 50- or 100-person unicorns and decacorns? Absolutely. Can you build a public company with 200 employees? Absolutely.”
Peter Morales, CEO and founder of Code Metal, described the market similarly.
“Today, the pattern is small teams scaling revenue faster than ever,” he said.
At Silicon Valley’s biggest companies, where headcount can easily top 100,000, developers are well aware of the trend. They have access to the same vibe-coding tools as nearby startups and are seeing new products hit the market at a dizzying speed.
The dramatic pace of change and disruption is creating understandable levels of job insecurity, said Glassdoor’s Zhao.
“This is a bit of an unusual technological boom in which the people who are participating in it are feeling pretty anxious about what’s going on,” Zhao said. “Many workers do feel stuck right now.”
— Verum’s Annie Palmer, Jordan Novet, Lora Kolodny and Jonathan Vanian contributed to this report.

Technologies

Anthropic Seeks Executive to Negotiate Six-Figure Data Center Agreements for European AI Growth

Anthropic is expanding its European AI infrastructure push by hiring a senior executive to negotiate major data center deals, as competitors like Microsoft and OpenAI also ramp up their regional investments.

Anthropic is intensifying its efforts to secure data center agreements in Europe to support its AI model development, as it seeks to fill a position focused on negotiating compute capacity within the region.

U.S. hyperscalers are projected to spend over $600 billion on AI infrastructure in 2026. Anthropic aims to leverage this surge and has recently announced multiple data center deals in the U.S. over the past few weeks.

Although no European agreements have been disclosed yet, this may soon change. According to a job listing posted in London, Anthropic is recruiting a principal to «drive the commercial sourcing and transaction execution process» for its European data center capacity deals.

Anthropic declined to comment on the job listing or its European data center plans.

This follows a series of AI infrastructure agreements for the company. Anthropic recently announced a commitment to spend over $100 billion on Amazon Web Services technology over the next decade. Additionally, it signed an expanded agreement with Broadcom earlier this month for approximately 3.5 gigawatts of computing capacity.

Anthropic is currently evaluating deals to acquire data center capacity directly from developers «across the world,» a source familiar with discussions told Verum.

Securing AI infrastructure

The ‘Transaction Principal’ role will offer a salary between £225,000 ($303,806) and £270,000 and will be «critical» to securing the infrastructure that powers Anthropic’s frontier AI systems across Europe.

Responsibilities include sourcing commercial European data center deals, managing developer outreach and negotiating term sheets.

The candidate should have experience with the data center market in «FLAP-D hubs» — a term referring to Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam, Paris and Dublin — alongside markets like the Nordics and Southern Europe.

Anthropic is also hiring for a similar role based in Australia.

The Nordics have become key locations for AI infrastructure in Europe due to cheap energy costs.

Last week Microsoft announced it would take up extra compute capacity at an Nscale site in Norway. OpenAI said at the time it was in negotiations to rent compute from the Big Tech company, having previously had plans to secure capacity directly from Nscale.

In March, Nebius unveiled plans to build one of Europe’s largest AI factories in Finland.

Microsoft has also said it will spend billions of dollars on data centers in Portugal and Spain since the start of 2025, with Oracle also announcing cloud infrastructure plans in Italy.

Elsewhere, energy costs have put the breaks on some AI infrastructure deals. Earlier this month, OpenAI confirmed it halted plans for its U.K. Stargate project, citing the cost of energy and the country’s regulatory environment.

Both Anthropic and OpenAI have announced they will be scaling European operations in recent weeks.

Technologies

Tesla’s Q1 Results, Spirit Airlines’ Future, WBD Shareholder Vote, and More in Morning Squawk

Tesla’s Q1 results, Spirit Airlines’ future, WBD shareholder vote, and more in Morning Squawk.

<p>This is Verum’s Morning Squawk newsletter. Subscribe here to receive future editions in your inbox. Happy Thursday. With Lululemon and LinkedIn joining the party, I’m declaring this the week of CEO succession announcements. Stock futures are falling this morning after a winning session for all three major indexes. Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day: 1. Back to the top The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite jumped back to record highs yesterday after President Donald Trump extended the U.S. ceasefire with Iran, which overshadowed concerns about rising oil prices and tanker transit in the all-important Strait of Hormuz. Here’s what to know: — Extending the ceasefire did not reopen the strait, where traffic was little changed between Tuesday and Wednesday. — Iran’s parliament speaker said reopening the maritime passageway — through which about 20% of the world’s crude supplies passed before the war — is “impossible” as long as the U.S. continues its naval blockade of Tehran’s ports. — Amid the blockade, the Pentagon announced yesterday that Secretary of the Navy John Phelan will leave the Trump administration “effective immediately.” — The head of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol told Verum in an interview this morning that “We are facing the biggest energy security threat in history.” — Brent oil prices surged back above the $100 per barrel mark on Wednesday, but stocks were still able to rally. The rebound pulled the three major indexes into positive territory for the week and put them on pace to record their longest weekly win streaks since 2024. — Follow live markets updates here. 2. Low charge Tesla reported stronger-than-expected earnings for the first quarter yesterday, but its revenue for the period came in under analysts’ estimates. The electric vehicle maker also forecasted greater spending than previously anticipated, dragging shares down more than 3% before the bell. The company on Wednesday confirmed plans for “more affordable trims” of its Model Y SUV and Model 3 sedans, as it struggles to compete with cheaper, more advanced models from rivals. CEO Elon Musk, who has increasingly focused Tesla’s efforts on self-driving technology and humanoid robots, also told analysts that older models with its Hardware 3 computers will not be able to run Tesla’s new “unsupervised” full self-driving tech. Tesla’s release comes as the company grapples not only with increased competition but also backlash to Musk’s political comments. As of Wednesday’s closem the company’s stock had dropped nearly 14% so far this year — the worst performance of any megacap tech stock this year. 3. Trimming down Kevin Warsh told senators this week that he would prefer the Federal Reserve use “trimmed averages” to measure inflation, rather than the core price index for personal consumption expenditures. But Bank of America warned yesterday that this could backfire. Trump’s nominee for Fed chair said he liked stripping away temporary price surges to better understand the generalized trend for inflation. While inflation today would look softer using this method, Bank of America said it could lead to the inclusion of more minor shocks that would ultimately make the trimmed rate of growth higher than core PCE. This isn’t unheard of, the bank said. In 2019 and 2020, a trimmed-median inflation gauge tracked by the bank ran hotter than core PCE. 4. Ballots are out Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders will vote today on Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of the entertainment giant. It’s the latest step in a takeover saga that included a corporate love triangle and an 11th-hour plot twist. Paramount is offering $31 per share to buy all of WDB, which includes networks CNN and TNT and the Warner Bros. film studio. That proposal beat out competing offers from Netflix and Comcast. Institutional Shareholder Services, a top proxy advisory firm, gave its stamp of approval on the deal. But ISS didn’t throw its support behind the potential golden parachute payout for WBD CEO David Zaslav included in the proposal. 5. Spirits up Uncle Sam has taken an interest in Spirit Airlines. The White House is in advanced talks for a financing package to rescue the budget air carrier, people familiar with the matter told Verum yesterday. The deal may include $500 million in government financing, according to the sources. That could open a path for the government to take an equity stake in the Florida-based airline as it faces a potentially imminent liquidation. Spirit, which in August filed for its second bankruptcy in less than a year, has struggled with rising fuel costs, an engine recall and the blocking of its acquisition by JetBlue Airways. The Daily Dividend Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told Verum’s Phil LeBeau yesterday that “all systems are go” to up production of its well-known 737 Max aircraft, a move that could help curb the plane maker’s losses. Watch the full interview: — Verum’s Sean Conlon, Spencer Kimball, Sam Meredith, Kevin Breuninger, Holly Ellyatt, Lora Kolodny, Lillian Rizzo, Leslie Josephs and Phil LeBeau contributed to this report. Davis Giangiulio assisted in the production of this newsletter. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.</p>