YHLO "hardly rides" the brain-computer interface hotspot: suspected of misleading statements, the company and executives are proposed to be fined 7.5 million

Recently, due to allegations of exaggeration and misleading investors in disclosing its collaboration with a brain-computer interface company, the Sci-Tech Innovation Board listed company YHLO and its executive team will face severe penalties from regulators.

On February 28, YHLO announced that it had received an "Advance Notice of Administrative Penalty" issued by the Shenzhen Regulatory Bureau.

According to the regulatory authorities, YHLO seriously deviated from objective facts when disclosing its strategic cooperation with Shenzhen Brain-Computer Starlink Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Brain-Computer Starlink").

In a previous announcement, YHLO claimed that Brain-Computer Starlink was deeply engaged in "both non-invasive and invasive dual technology paths."

However, Brain-Computer Starlink only has non-invasive technology, and apart from a prototype of a vagus nerve stimulator, all other products are still in the research and development stage, with no prototypes available.

According to industry insiders, the technical difficulties between invasive and non-invasive methods are vastly different.

The former requires craniotomy or interventional surgery to implant probes to read neural signals; the latter is relatively simple, requiring only the wearing of corresponding devices outside the skull to read signals. For example, one of the most notable companies in the current brain-computer interface industry, Neuralink, follows an invasive technical route.

Moreover, in response to the inquiry letter from the Shanghai Stock Exchange, YHLO still did not fully disclose the actual development stage of its products in its reply, even claiming that Brain-Computer Starlink had "orders" in the non-serious medical product sector.

However, regulatory investigations confirmed that the so-called orders were merely framework cooperation agreements, with no actual orders.

The Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Bureau believes that the aforementioned disclosures by YHLO have caused or may cause investors to make erroneous judgments, allegedly violating relevant provisions of the Securities Law and constituting misleading statements.

In this regard, the regulatory authorities intend to impose the following administrative penalties:

First, YHLO is ordered to rectify, given a warning, and fined 4 million yuan;

Second, both the company's chairman Hu Penghui and secretary Wang Mingyang are given warnings and fined 2 million yuan and 1.5 million yuan, respectively.

In the capital market, listed companies often face extremely high risks of information disclosure violations when they ride on hot topics to hype concepts. YHLO's recent 7.5 million yuan fine for "forcibly" binding the brain-computer interface concept undoubtedly serves as a wake-up call to the market: authenticity, accuracy, and completeness are the bottom line for information disclosure, and any attempts to mislead investors through wordplay will ultimately be scrutinized by regulators