Neuro Gum on Shark Tank: Kent Yoshimura and Ryan Chen Turned Down Two Sharks, Got Sued, and Later Signed the Guest Shark Who Passed

No, Neuro gum (NeuroGum) did not get a deal on Shark Tank. In an episode that aired on April 10, 2020, co-founders Kent Yoshimura and Ryan Chen asked for $750,000 for 5% of their caffeinated gum-and-mint company. Kevin O’Leary and Robert Herjavec both made offers, and the founders turned both down. Six years later Neuro is still independent and still selling. It has moved its headquarters to Las Vegas, and the company says the guest Shark who passed on the pitch, KIND founder Daniel Lubetzky, became a partner in 2026. In between came a trademark lawsuit, filed ten days after the episode aired. Nearly every growth figure since then comes from the company itself, so that is how we report them below.

What Neuro is, and why it has two names

The brand is called Neuro. The company that makes it is NeuroGum, Inc., and it sells through neurogum.com, so people search for both names. The main product is Energy & Focus gum. The brand’s own Amazon listing gives the formula as 40mg of natural caffeine and 60mg of L-theanine plus vitamins B6 and B12, and the line also includes mints. The company says it launched in 2015. Since then it has added products for memory, calm and sleep, the last of which uses melatonin.

The founders: Kent Yoshimura and Ryan Chen

According to the company’s own history, Yoshimura and Chen met as students at UC San Diego. Yoshimura brought a background in neuroscience and Chen one in chemistry, and they worked out their first formulas in Yoshimura’s apartment. At 19, Chen was paralyzed from the waist down in a snowboarding accident. In 2026 the founders told the One Day with Jon Bier podcast, in an episode written up by Entrepreneur, that neither had ever formulated a product or worked in marketing.

They started with an Indiegogo campaign, which the company says hit its goal in three days. The Daily Meal puts the total raised at $20,571. The founders describe the early years as lean. Neither took a paycheck for the first couple of years. Chen relied on savings from a previous job at Hulu, and Yoshimura painted murals to pay the bills. Chen said he was still earning $36,000 a year five or six years in. They put first-year revenue at $109,000, the second year at $750,000 and the third at $1.5 million, and said they raised about $1.6 million in total over the company’s first seven years. All of that comes from the founders on the podcast, not from filings. “It’s hard to stay hungry when you’re fed,” Chen said.

What Neuro pitched on Shark Tank

Neuro on Shark Tank was Season 11, Episode 19. The panel was Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, Kevin O’Leary, Robert Herjavec and Daniel Lubetzky as guest Shark. According to the company, the founders asked for $750,000 for 5%, which values Neuro at $15 million (our post-money valuation calculator shows the arithmetic). Recaps give different versions of the sales they cited: The Daily Meal says $3.5 million in the year before the show, while Primetimer says $3.5 million was the target for that year. Cuban, Greiner and Lubetzky all dropped out. The Daily Meal reports that Lubetzky said he didn’t connect with the business.

Did Neuro get a deal on Shark Tank?

No. O’Leary offered the full $750,000 for 5%, but added a 50-cent royalty on every unit until he had recouped $1 million. The royalty makes that offer more expensive than its valuation suggests. According to The Daily Meal’s account, Herjavec offered $1 million for 20%, a $5 million valuation. Yoshimura countered at $10 million, Herjavec came back at $7 million, and the founders said no. They turned down O’Leary too. Writing in Entrepreneur, contributor Jon Bier said they were “unwilling to give up the equity or the control.” The tradeoff they made is laid out in bootstrapping vs. venture capital.

The lawsuit that followed the episode

In March 2026, Neuro’s blog said that “not long after our episode aired, we were hit with a lawsuit,” and that the founders asked Lubetzky for help. According to the company, he helped them reach a settlement. The company didn’t name the case. Primetimer described it as a trademark suit when it recapped the 2026 update segment.

Federal court records show one case that matches. Neurobrands, LLC v. Neurogum, Inc. (C.D. Cal. No. 2:20-cv-03612) was a trademark-infringement suit filed in Los Angeles on April 20, 2020, ten days after the episode aired. NeuroGum filed a counterclaim. Yoshimura and Chen attended a court-supervised settlement conference in April 2021, and the case was dismissed with prejudice under a settlement in November 2021. The terms are not public. We can’t confirm from the docket that this is the case Lubetzky helped with, though the timing fits the company’s account.

What happened to Neuro after Shark Tank

According to Neuro, sales rose more than 700% after the episode. Primetimer reports the founders citing a 727% week-over-week jump in the update segment. The company also says Joe Rogan began mentioning the gum on his podcast without being asked, and Entrepreneur’s piece says the same.

Nevada state records add some independent detail. A Governor’s Office of Economic Development board packet dated May 8, 2025 shows NeuroGum, Inc. applying for tax abatements to add distribution and fulfillment to its Las Vegas headquarters. The application lists 20 full-time employees before the expansion, plans for 32 new jobs and $295,000 in equipment, and an estimated $62,822 in abatements over ten years. “The availability of the tax abatement package was a significant factor in our decision to expand operations in Nevada,” the company wrote. The company profile in the packet says Neuro had sold over 50 million pieces as of early 2023 and was “on track to achieve eight-figure sales.”

By April 2026, a Neuro press release said it had sold “over half a billion pieces of gum and mints,” was a top-10 brand on TikTok Shop, and was coming “soon” to Costco. The company’s March 2026 blog post claims $135 million in lifetime sales. Store counts don’t line up. The same post says both “over 10,000 retail locations” and “more than 20,000 stores,” and Entrepreneur’s July 2026 piece by a public-relations firm founder says 66,000. NeuroGum is private and publishes no audited figures. Treat all of these numbers as company claims.

Who owns Neuro now, and is it still in business?

Yes, Neuro is still in business. As far as the public record shows, NeuroGum, Inc. is still independent and run by its co-founders, and we found no announced sale. In 2026, Lubetzky “officially became a partner in Neuro,” according to the company. Primetimer describes it as an investment. Neither has disclosed terms, so how much of the company he owns is unknown. Neuro came back to Shark Tank for an update segment in Season 17, Episode 13, which aired on March 11, 2026. It did not get a deal then either. “We didn’t land a deal in the Tank,” the company wrote. The gum is sold at Walmart, CVS, Whole Foods and on the brand’s own Amazon store.

Neuro Energy & Focus gum, peppermint, 90 pieces

What founders can take from it

First, turning down a Shark is a valuation decision, and it only works if you can pay for the alternative. Neuro could say no because it already had revenue and a lean cost base, so the founders weren’t desperate for capital.

Second, a brand name is an asset you may have to defend. Neuro was sued for trademark infringement ten days after its biggest publicity moment, and the case took 19 months to settle.

Third, a Shark who passes on camera can still be useful later. Lubetzky declined on the show, then helped settle the lawsuit and, the company says, became a partner.

Finally, read company figures closely. Pieces sold, lifetime sales and store counts are all company-reported and often inconsistent with one another. None of them is a measure of profit.

Neuro is one of four companies in our sample that left without a deal; two of the others, Ring and Kodiak Cakes, became two of the largest outcomes. See Shark Tank deals by the numbers.