Entrepreneur Elon Musk launched Neuralink Corp. to implant electrodes into human brains to enhance their computer interface, sources said.
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Musk, 45, the South African-born founder and CEO of both electric carmaker Tesla Inc. and privately owned rocket company SpaceX, established the California-based company and is taking an active role in its funding and development, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, citing sources involved in the company’s start.
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Neuralink will pursue neural lace technology, in which small electrodes are implanted in the brain as cranial computers.
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Building on simpler technology already in use to treat Parkinson’s disease, the internal computers could be used at first to deal with brain disorders such as epilepsy and depression, a market the Wall Street Journal suggested is worth billions of dollars.
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They could later be put to use as a direct cortical interface, Musk said, or artificial intelligence within the brain, to enhance human function and expand human potential.
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Musk has commented since August on progress being made in the field, and said in a Twitter message Monday that an update about his new company could be expected in a week.
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Difficult to dedicate the time, but existential risk is too high not to, he said.
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Neuralink, identified in state filings as a medical research company, recently hired several scholars in the cognition field. The industry is growing; a startup called Kernel, a Neuralink competitor, already has 20 employees, Facebook Inc. seeks brain-computer interface engineers and the U.S. Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has $60 million to spend on implantable neural interface technology.