The dog stands still, a sensor array resting gently against its skull. On a nearby screen, a waveform dances in real time, a direct readout of the animal's olfactory bulb as it processes the world. General Sense, a Florida deeptech company, is turning detection dogs into high-fidelity, biological sensors for a chemical intelligence layer [SOSV].
The Nose-Computer Interface
General Sense's core technology is a Nose-Computer Interface (NCI), a hardware and software stack that reads neural signals directly from a dog's olfactory bulb and translates them into digital data streams [SOSV]. The company, which operated previously as Canaery, frames this as foundational infrastructure. Every deployed animal feeds a shared model that grows smarter with each sniff, creating a networked sensing platform [SOSV]. The ambition is to own a frontier data modality: the chemical lobe for embodied intelligence.
A Wedge in Security and Defense
General Sense is starting with security and defense applications, where detection dogs for explosives, narcotics, and contraband are already deployed but limited by scale and subjective handler interpretation [LinkedIn]. The NCI, developed in collaboration with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, aims to upgrade these existing assets, allowing a single dog to identify multiple target odors simultaneously and stream that data for centralized analysis [eenewseurope.com]. Long-term applications include medical diagnostics and environmental monitoring [LinkedIn].
The Team and the Traction
CEO Westley Dang holds a PhD in neuroscience from The Scripps Research Institute and spent six years investing in deep tech at SOSV's IndieBio program [RocketReach, LinkedIn]. Co-founder and COO Gabriel Lavella is a former DARPA engineering advisor [My TechDecisions, Businesswire]. The company has raised at least $4 million in a seed round led by Breakout Ventures, with SOSV as a portfolio investor, and a further $5 million round was reported in mid-2024 [SOSV, 2022], [Wellfound, July 2024].
| Role | Name | Key Background |
|---|---|---|
| CEO | Westley Dang | PhD in Neuroscience (Scripps), former deep tech investor at SOSV/IndieBio |
| Founder & COO | Gabriel Lavella | Former DARPA engineering advisor |
Where the Scent Trail Could Fade
- The biological black box. Decoding neural signals into specific, actionable chemical identifiers is an extraordinarily complex neuroscientific challenge.
- The scaling paradox. The model depends on a network of biologically limited nodes, trained dogs. Acquiring, caring for, and deploying enough animals to generate the data density needed for a robust AI model is a logistical and ethical undertaking.
- The silent market. There is no public record of paid customer deployments or pilot partnerships.
The company's progress, including what it calls the world's first real-time detection of the chemical world from neural activity in 2025, suggests it is hitting technical milestones [Internexxus, 2026]. The next twelve months will be critical for moving from a compelling demo to a documented, repeatable sale.