Company type | Private |
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Industry | Neurotechnology |
Founded | June 21, 2016 |
Founder | Elon Musk |
Headquarters | Fremont, California, United States[1] |
Key people | Jared Birchall (CEO)[2] |
Products |
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Owner | Elon Musk |
Number of employees | c. 300[3] (2022) |
Website | neuralink |
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Personal Companies In popular culture Related |
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Neuralink Corp.[4] is an American neurotechnology company that has developed, as of 2024, implantable brain–computer interfaces (BCIs). It was founded by Elon Musk and a team of eight scientists and engineers.[4][5][6][7] Neuralink was launched in 2016 and was first publicly reported in March 2017.[8][9][10][11]
In January 2017, Musk approached Pedram Mohseni and Randolph Nudo, who owned the rights to the name "NeuraLink". These two neuroscientists strove to create an electronic brain chip to treat traumatic brain injury. They made significant progress and completed preliminary testing but did not receive enough funding or support from investors to continue. Musk approached them and offered tens of thousands of dollars for the company’s name.[12]
The company is based in Fremont, California, with plans to build a three-story building with office and manufacturing space near Austin, Texas, in Del Valle, about 10 miles east of Tesla's headquarters and manufacturing plant that opened in 2022.[5]
Since its founding, the company has hired several high-profile neuroscientists from various universities.[13] By 2019, it had received $158 million in funding (of which $100 million was from Musk) and had 90 employees.[14] At that time, Neuralink announced that it was working on a "sewing machine-like" device capable of implanting very thin (4 to 6 μm in width)[15] threads into the brain, and demonstrated a system that reads information from a lab rat via 1,500 electrodes. It anticipated starting experiments with humans in 2020,[14] but since moved that projection to 2023. As of May 2023, it has been approved for human trials in the United States.[6] On January 29, 2024, Musk announced that Neuralink had successfully implanted a Neuralink device in a human and that the patient was recovering.[16]
The company has faced criticism for a large amount of euthanization of primates that underwent medical trials. Veterinary records of the monkeys showed a number of complications with electrodes being surgically implanted.[17]
In September 2024, the company announced that its latest development effort, Blindsight, will allow those who would otherwise be blind to regain some level of vision, provided the visual cortex is undamaged. The development received "breakthrough" status from the federal government, which will accelerate development.[18]
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