Jonathan Berent

Jonathan Berent is the founder and CEO of NextSense, a Silicon Valley neurotechnology company that senses the brain from inside the ear. Before NextSense he was a director of stealth projects at X, Google’s moonshot factory. A Stanford graduate, he guest-lectures on lucid dreaming and sleep hacking in Stanford’s legendary Sleep and Dreams course. Clandestine Games: Junior Recruit, his debut, was a finalist in the 2019 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition; he drafted it in three months in 2016 on a polyphasic sleep schedule after a lucid dream told him to write a novel. He is the son of novelists Mark and Polly Berent and lives in Mountain View, California.

🏆 Finalist, 2019 William Faulkner–William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition

Quick facts

• Debut novel: Clandestine Games: Junior Recruit — Book 1 of the Clandestine Games series (Book 2, Clandestine Games: White Terror, in progress)
• Published: July 2026 (Amazon KDP) — Kindle and paperback
• Day job: Founder & CEO, NextSense — brain-sensing earbuds
• Education: Stanford University
• Lives in: Mountain View, California
• Contact: jberent@gmail.com (readers) · jb@nextsense.io (press)

Links: Buy on Amazon (Kindle & paperback) · Goodreads · Free serialized audiobook · Sample chapters · NextSense · Press kit