The vision of SmartVNS arose from recognising clear gaps in the current state of the art for stroke neurorehabilitation. As a team of neuroscientists and engineers, with a network of clinicians in the field of brain physiology and neuroengineering, we became aware that existing neural stimulation therapies of stroke rehabilitation were either ineffective, invasive, expensive, or too cumbersome for patient use. As experts in the field of motor control and brain manipulations, we found that there are no existing solutions to pair neural stimulation directly with neurally-relevant movement-derived signals in the brain, which are essential for motor learning and motor recovery. Furthermore, we noticed there is a lack of effective devices (both invasive and non-invasive) that promote long-term neural plasticity and/or recruitment of other motor control pathways essential for recovery of motor function. Finally, we noticed that existing solutions for neural stimulation in stroke rehabilitation can only be started months-years after the initial infarct, which miss the critical window for stroke recovery believed to be in the first days to weeks after the infarct.