Overview

• Neuralink closed its $650 million funding round with participation from ARK Invest, Sequoia Capital, Founders Fund, Thrive Capital and others, valuing the company at about $9 billion.
• The capital will back ongoing Telepathy trials in the United States, Europe and Asia, where five patients with severe paralysis already control digital and physical devices by thought.
• Neuralink’s system uses 64 hair-thin threads implanted into the brain to record neural signals through 1,024 electrodes and transmit commands to external hardware.
• The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted breakthrough device designations for Neuralink’s speech restoration interface and its Blindsight vision-restoring implant.
• Rivals including Synchron, Paradromics and Precision Neuroscience are also conducting human studies of brain-computer interfaces.