Jonathan Berent | Source | CEO & Founder at NextSense

Jonathan Berent is the Founder and CEO of founder & CEO of Tone by NextSense, a health tech company developing brain sensing technologies to help understand and treat neurological diseases and monitor brain health.

He just spoke at Tedx Palo Alto on Paleo Sleeping, outlining how understanding and personalizing our sleep patterns can help us tap into restorative power throughout the day, not just during the night, and unveiled Tone Buds at CES 2025.

Berent believes that further unlocking how the brain works will transform our lives, from health to creativity to even our relationships and understanding of ourselves. He began pursuing his interest in neuroscience after experimenting with polyphasic sleep and becoming fascinated with altered states of consciousness during sleep.

His work includes a guest lecture at Stanford, “Dement's Sleep and Dreams,” which has become one of the University’s most popular classes. In it, Berent offers an industry perspective on the state of the art for consumer sleep tracking devices coupled with a practical lecture on achieving lucidity during dreams.

Before becoming a Director at Google X, Berent held a number of positions at Google, leading large teams of digital marketing specialists focused on customer experience and onboarding. He also previously served as a Senior Director at Oracle. Berent’s 25 year career in technology has ranged from pioneering the first web-based voting system at Stanford University to helping negotiate some of the early Java contracts at Sun Microsystems with IBM, BEA, and Motorola.

Berent has spoken at various conferences such as Chan Zuckerberg BioHub, Stanford Medicine Big Data Health, and the California Sleep Society where he discussed the latest scientific findings for an unusual state of dreaming characterized by increased frontal lobe activity despite being in a classic REM state (more commonly known as lucid dreaming). At Google, he hosted a popular Google Talk on developing an inclusive mindset in the workplace with a world-renowned teacher/wisdom guide, Sadhguru.

Jonathan won a semi-finalist distinction in the annual Faulkner's Society contest for a novel named "Clandestine Games: Junior Recruit"