Electronics Weekly
Investors in Neuralink included: ARK Invest, Founders Fund, Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital, Lightspeed, Vy Capital, Valor Equity Capital, QIA, Human Capital, and others.
“Since our Series D in August 2023, we’ve made significant progress towards building brain interfaces to help restore independence,” says Neuralink, instancing four advances:
. Five individuals with severe paralysis are now using Neuralink’s ‘Telepathy’ product to control digital and physical devices with their thoughts. Telepathy involves inserting 64 threads into the brain which record neural signals through 1,024 electrodes.
. Clinical trials began at institutions for neurosurgical care including Barrow Neurological Institute, The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis at the University of Miami, University Health Network (Toronto Western Hospital), and Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.
. Paving the way for applying Neuralink technology to use cases beyond digital device control by launching the CONVOY trial and securing FDA Breakthrough Device designation for both innovative vision and speech restoration programs.
. Progressing towards a whole-brain interface.
The FDA “Breakthrough Device” designation was for a device called Blindsight which, says Musk, restores sight to those who have lost their sight in both eyes and whose optic nerve has failed.
“We’re hiring engineers and operators across disciplines who want to make a real-world impact,” says Neuralink, “if you value end-to-end ownership, first-principles thinking, and tackling hard problems, apply now at neuralink.com/careers”.
Anyone interested in participating in Neuralink’s current or future clinical trials or who knows anyone that could benefit from the technology, should join Neuralink’s Patient Registry at neuralink.com/patient-registry.
The $5 billion loan for xAI is thought to be to help defray the cost of the Colossus datacentre Musk is building in Memphis which houses 200,000 GPUs and another datacentre nearby which is expected to have 1 million GPUs. Musk is said to be looking to raise $20 billion for xAI.
The Neuralink funding values the company at $9 billion and xAI is said to be putting shares worth $300 million up for sale at a company valuation of $113 billion.
