About us
NeuraLink 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. NeuraLink was launched in 2016 and first publicly reported in March 2017.
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.
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 Gigafactory Texas, Tesla's headquarters and manufacturing plant that opened in 2022.
Since its founding, the company has hired several high-profile neuroscientists from various universities. 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) 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.
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.
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.
We have more than 1,100 employees all over the world. Most of them are from Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Alibaba and other famous internet companies. The
digital asset transactions has led the world, providing safe and reliable value digital asset services for tens of millions of users in more than 50 countries.
KoinDeFi has the world's top security risk control system, safe and reliable value network services, 7 years of digital asset transaction service experience, profes
distributed architecture and DDOS attack prevention system.
Inspired
Want more out of your forex trading? Our Loyalty Cashback promotion has you covered (T&Cs apply).
Technology
In 2018, Gizmodo reported that Neuralink "remained highly secretive about its work", although public records showed that it had sought to open an animal testing facility in San Francisco; it subsequently began doing research at the University of California, Davis. In 2019, during a live presentation at the California Academy of Sciences, the Neuralink team revealed to the public the technology of the first prototype it had been working on. It is a system that involves ultra-thin probes inserted into the brain, a neurosurgical robot to perform the operations, and a high-density electronic system capable of processing information from neurons. It is based on technology developed at University of California, San Francisco and University of California, Berkeley.
History
Neuralink was founded in 2016 by Elon Musk and a founding team of eight scientists and engineers: Max Hodak, Benjamin Rapoport, Dongjin Seo, Paul Merolla, Philip Sabes, Tim Gardner, Tim Hanson, and Vanessa Tolosa. The group of initial hires consisted of experts in areas such as neuroscience, biochemistry, and robotics.[10] The trademark "Neuralink" was purchased from its previous owners in January 2017.
In April 2017, Neuralink announced that it was aiming to make devices to treat serious brain diseases in the short term, with the eventual goal of human enhancement, sometimes called transhumanism.[22][10][23] Musk said his interest in the idea partly stemmed from the concept of "neural lace" in the fictional universe in The Culture, a series of 10 novels by Iain M. Banks.
Musk defined the neural lace as a "digital layer above the cortex" that would not necessarily require extensive surgical insertion but could be implanted through a vein or artery. He said the long-term goal is to achieve "symbiosis with artificial intelligence", which he perceives as an existential threat to humanity if it goes unchecked. He believes the device will be "something analogous to a video game, like a saved game situation, where you are able to resume and upload your last state" and "address brain injuries or spinal injuries and make up for whatever lost capacity somebody has with a chip."
Jared Birchall, the head of Musk's family office, was listed as Neuralink's CEO, CFO, and president in 2018. As of September 2018, Musk was its majority owner but did not hold an executive position.[31] By August 2020, only three of the eight founding scientists remained at the company, according to an article by Stat News that reported that Neuralink had seen "years of internal conflict in which rushed timelines have clashed with the slow and incremental pace of science." As of 2020, Neuralink was headquartered in San Francisco's Mission District, sharing the Pioneer building with OpenAI, another company Musk co-founded. As of 2022, Neuralink's headquarters were in Fremont, California.
In April 2021, Neuralink demonstrated a monkey playing the game "Pong" using the Neuralink implant. While similar technology has existed since 2002, when a research group first demonstrated a monkey moving a computer cursor with neural signals, scientists acknowledged the engineering progress in making the implant wireless and increasing the number of implanted electrodes.
In May 2021, co-founder and president Max Hodak announced that he no longer worked with the company. Co-founder Benjamin Rapoport cited safety concerns as a major influence on his decision to leave Neuralink in 2018. [38] Rapoport subsequently founded Precision Neuroscience, emphasizing the use of surface electrodes as opposed to the penetrating electrodes of Neuralink, in order to address brain damage and other safety concerns caused by Neuralink's devices. Only two of the eight co-founders remained at the company by January 2022.[40]
On February 8, 2024, Musk changed the location of Neuralink's business incorporation from Delaware to Nevada, after Delaware Chancery Court Chief Judge Kathaleen St. J. McCormick voided Musk’s $55 billion pay package at Tesla.