NeuralinkThe company founded by Elon Musk that develops implantable chips that can read brain waves, has raised an additional $43 million in venture capital, according to a presentation with the SEC.
The filing released this week shows the company increased its previous tranche, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, from $280 million to $323 million in early August. Thirty-two investors participated, according to the document.
Neuralink has not revealed its valuation recently. But in June, Reuters technology/musks-neuralink-raises-280-mln-latest-fundraise-2023-08-07/”>reported that the company was valued at about $5 billion after private stock market operations.
Founded in 2016, Neuralink has devised a device similar to a sewing machine capable of implanting ultra-fine threads inside the brain. The wires connect to a custom-designed chip that contains electrodes that can read information from groups of neurons.
Brain signal reading implants are a technology that has existed for decades. But Neuralink’s apparent innovation lies in making the implants wireless and increasing the number of implanted electrodes.
In May, Neuralink received FDA approval for human clinical trials after its application was previously rejected, and opened its first human trials for enrollment under an investigational device exemption from the FDA.
But Neuralink is under increasing scrutiny for what critics allege is a toxic work culture and unethical research practices.
In January 2022 article At Fortune, anonymous former employees described a “culture of blame and fear,” one in which Musk frequently undermined management by encouraging junior employees to “email him their problems and complaints directly.” As of August 2020, only three of the eight founding scientists remained with the company, as reported by Stat News. piece described as “an internal conflict in which rushed deadlines… collided with the slow, incremental pace of science.”
In 2022, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) alleged that Neuralink and UC Davis, once its research partners, had mistreated several monkeys involved in testing Neuralink hardware, subjecting them to psychological distress and infections. chronic due to surgeries. Reports from both technology/musks-neuralink-faces-federal-probe-employee-backlash-over-animal-tests-2022-12-05/”>Reuters and cabling suggested that the tests were being rushed due to Musk’s demands for quick results, which led to complications with the installation of the electrodes, including partial paralysis and brain swelling.
For nearly a year, Neuralink was under federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for animal welfare violations. The USDA ultimately concluded that there was “no evidence” of animal welfare violations in the startup’s trials, aside from a previous self-reported incident in 2019, but the PCRM disputed the results of the investigation.
In November 2023, US lawmakers asked the SEC to investigate Neuralink for omitting details about the deaths of at least a dozen animals that had their implants surgically placed.
