Neuralink Raises $280M in New Funding
Elon Musk’s brain chip implant company, Neuralink, has raised $280 million in new funding. Investments were attracted within the Series D round for the development of its technology.
Elon Musk’s brain chip implant company announces funding
Neuralink announced the funding in a post on social media company, X. The company said it received $280 million in Series D round. The deal was led by Founders Fund, a venture capital company. The new funding will allow Neuralink to grow and prepare for the first human tests, which are scheduled for later this year.
Neuralink is approved for human trials
Musk’s company has been working on the technology since 2017. In 2019, the first results were presented. The N1 chip, which will be implanted in the brain, was shown. At the end of May, Neuralink received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to conduct its first human clinical trial. This was a big breakthrough for the company. At the time, Neuralink stated it would not rush into testing. However, getting the approval showed that the technology is already good enough to move on to a new phase of testing.
The first chip will be implanted in 2023
Elon Musk spoke at the VivaTech conference, which took place in Paris in June. During the interview, answering a question from the audience, he said Neuralink wants to implant a chip in the human brain before the end of this year. Musk said the recipient would likely be someone who suffers from a “form of quadriplegia,” meaning paralyzed limbs.
“It will be a very slow process. We will start with strong conditions where the connection between the brain and the body has been interrupted. We see a path to transfer the signal beyond the broken point to restore full body use. You can imagine how profound the impact would be,” he said.