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 initial hires included experts in neuroscience, biochemistry, and robotics. In January 2017, Musk proxies approached Pedram Mohseni and Randolph Nudo, who owned the rights to the name "NeuraLink" and the prototype on which Musk's company based its work.
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 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."
By August 2020, only three of the eight founding scientists remained at the company, according to an article by Stat News. It 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 May 2021, co-founder and president Max Hodak announced that he no longer worked with the company. Only two of the eight co-founders remained at the company as of January 2022.
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.
On May 29, 2024, Musk issued a request for public input on a challenge facing Neuralink. He suggested that due to the size of the data in need of transmission, a compression rate of more than 200x was needed. The challenge specified that compression needed to be lossless, work under low power, and compress data in real time. Software consultant Roy van Rijn called the prospect of 200x lossless compression "just outlandish."
Neuralink tests its devices by surgically implanting them in the brains of live monkeys, pigs, and other animals. This has been criticized by groups such as PETA.
In August 2020, Neuralink conducted a live demo in which the brain activity of a pig, Gertrude, was displayed in real time. A removable device the size of a coin (23 millimeters) implanted in Gertrude's brain recorded signals from the neurons connected to her snout as she interacted with her environment, such as when she sniffed or touched things. The data showed that the technology could read and interpret brain signals, which is key to developing applications that could treat neurological conditions, enable brain-to-machine communication, or enhance human cognition.
The demonstration included two other pigs. The Neuralink chip implanted in one of the pigs was removed to demonstrate that it could be done safely without damaging the pig's health. The third pig, which did not have an implanted chip, served as a comparison to show the similarity in health and behavior of the implanted and non-implanted pigs.
From 2017 to 2020, Neuralink's experiments on monkeys were conducted in partnership with University of California, Davis. At the end of the partnership, UC Davis transferred seven monkeys to Neuralink. In 2022, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an animal welfare advocacy group, alleged that Neuralink and UC Davis had mistreated several monkeys, subjecting them to psychological distress, extreme suffering, and chronic infections due to surgeries. Experiments conducted by Neuralink and UC Davis have involved at least 23 monkeys, and the PCRM believes that 15 of those died or were euthanized as a result of the experiments. The PCRM also alleged that UC Davis withheld photographic and video evidence of the mistreatment.
In 2022, after being rejected for human clinical trials by the FDA, Neuralink performed more tests on pigs to address safety concerns. Some of these pigs were observed to have developed granulomas (inflammatory tissues) in their brains. Neuralink could not determine the cause of the granulomas, but claimed that the implant and its associated threads were not the cause.
In July 2023, an investigation by the United States Department of Agriculture found no evidence of animal welfare breaches in the trials other than a self-reported incident from 2019. The PCRM disputed the investigation's result.
Both investigations were instigated by the nonprofit PCRM. In a December 2024 news release, PCRM wrote, "documents from the University of California, Davis, where Neuralink conducted monkey experiments from 2017 to 2020, reveal that implantation of the company's device caused debilitating health effects in monkeys, resulting in euthanasia. Animals experienced chronic infections, paralysis, swelling in the brain, loss of coordination and balance, and depression".
With recent changes in the SEC's leadership, the fate of these investigations is not clear. Musk has denied the allegations of abuse.
The FDA rejected Neuralink's 2022 application to pursue human clinical trials, citing "major safety concerns involving the device's lithium battery; the potential for the implant's tiny wires to migrate to other areas of the brain; and questions over whether and how the device can be removed without damaging brain tissue", but then approved it in May 2023.
On January 29, 2024, Musk said that Neuralink had successfully implanted Telepathy, a brain–computer interface (BCI) device, in a human on the previous day and that the patient was recovering from the surgery. As it was a "first in human" and "early feasibility" trial to develop a concept, the company was not obligated to disclose details about the procedure or to prove safety or efficacy. Neuralink provided a few details in February on the implant in a recruitment brochure for the Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface (PRIME) study. On February 20, Musk said that Neuralink's first human trial participant had been able to control a computer mouse by thought.
On March 20, 2024, through a livestream on X, Neuralink introduced the person who had received the first Neuralink implant in the clinical trial, 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh. Arbaugh had become a quadriplegic after a diving accident dislocated his C4 and C5 spinal vertebrae. Noland demonstrated his ability to move a cursor on a computer screen to allow him to control music and play games such as chess. He expressed support for the implant in improving his quality of life. He acknowledged that the device was not perfect but said he was excited about the future. In a subsequent interview, Arbaugh said that 85% of the device's implant threads had completely detached, as his brain had shifted approximately three times as much as Neuralink had expected.
Alex was reportedly able to create 3D designs by using the CAD software Fusion 360 and a custom mount for his Neuralink charger because of the implant. Additional accounts show that he has been able to play first-person shooter games at a higher level than previously. Unlike Arbaugh's implantation procedure, Alex's reduced brain motion and placed the implant closer to the brain's surface in an attempt to mitigate thread retraction. Since the initial operation, Alex has reportedly not experienced any thread retraction. Alex said, "The Link is a big step on the path of regaining freedom and independence for myself."
In November 2024, Neuralink received approval from Health Canada for its first clinical trial in that country. The trial, called CAN-PRIME, was to be led by Andres M. Lozano.
Scientists have cited technical challenges for Neuralink. In 2017, a journalist at the IEEE Spectrum magazine asked for comments from five researchers who had worked on BCI implants, including Thomas Oxley. Oxley called the Neuralink developments "exciting" but expected no real results in the foreseeable future. At a live demonstration in August 2020, Musk described the device as "a Fitbit in your skull". Several neuroscientists and publications criticized these claims. MIT Technology Review reported that the demonstration's main objective was to "stir excitement", adding, "Neuralink has provided no evidence that it can (or has even tried to) treat depression, insomnia, or a dozen other diseases that Musk mentioned in a slide". In response to Musk's description of Neuralink's advancements as "profound", Andrew Jackson, a professor of neural interfaces at Newcastle University, said, "I don't think there was anything revolutionary in the presentation."
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