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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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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 first publicly reported in March 2017.[8][9][10][11]
In January 2017, Musk proxies approached Pedram Mohseni and Randolph Nudo, who owned the rights to the name "NeuraLink" and the prototype that Musk's company based its work on. These two neuroscientists strove to create an electronic chip to treat traumatic brain injury. They made significant progress and completed preliminary testing but had not received enough support from investors to continue. "The pair of longtime neurotech researchers had developed a device that might help people with brain injuries. But their initial contacts with investors hadn't advanced very far when a stranger approached them offering tens of thousands of dollars for their company's name and prototype. They accepted. No one mentioned that Musk...was behind it."[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 Gigafactory Texas, 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 ($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 later moved that 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 the large number of primates that were euthanized after medical trials. Veterinary records of the monkeys showed complications with surgically implanted electrodes.[17]
In September 2024, the company announced that its latest development effort, Blindsight, would enable blind people whose visual cortex is undamaged to regain some level of vision. The development received "breakthrough" status from the U.S. federal government, which will accelerate development.[18]
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The company has hired away several high-profile neuroscientists
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