Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, Neuralink, has raised $600 million in a funding round that now values the company at $9 billion pre-money. While details about the investors were not revealed, United States news outlet Semafor noted in April that the startup was looking to raise $500 million at a $8.5 billion pre-money valuation.
According to reports, the American neurotechnology company with implantable brain–computer interfaces last raised $43 million in venture capital in November 2023, and was valued at about $5 billion in June 2023.
Since its founding, the company has hired several high-profile neuroscientists from various universities. Three years after its establishment, it received $158 million in funding ($100 million was from Musk) and had 90 employees. At that time, Neuralink announced that it was working on a “sewing machine-like” device capable of implanting very thin (4 to 6 μm in width) threads into the brain, and demonstrated a system that reads information from a lab rat via 1,500 electrodes.
Last September, Neuralink received a “breakthrough device” designation from the US Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), which marked a significant move for the brain-chip startup.
“Join us in our quest to bring back sight to those who have lost it. Apply to our Patient Registry and openings on our career page,” Neuralink said while sharing the approval development.
In that process, three people have so far received implants made by Neuralink. Also in November 2024, Neuralink received approval from Health Canada for its first clinical trial in that country, in which the trial, called CAN-PRIME, was to be led by Andres M. Lozano.
In H1 2024, Neuralink’s brain-computer interface was implanted in a second patient who has since been controlling video games and creating 3D designs using only their thoughts. In addition, a nonverbal patient posted a video about how he uses a Neuralink implant to edit and narrate YouTube videos with just his brain signals earlier this month.
Neuralink’s Blindsight breakthrough
Co-founded by Elon Musk and a team of eight scientists and engineers in 2016, Neuralink specialises in developing innovative brain-computer interfaces to transform treatments for neurological disorders. Its technology includes a brain implant that reads neural signals and wirelessly transmits them to external devices, including computers and mobile devices.
In one of its breakthroughs, the company announced plans to implant its new sight-giving chip, Blindsight, into a human patient for the first time in H2 2025 as the experimental medical device aims to restore sight to completely blind individuals.
Blindsight has been developed to enable individuals with total visual impairment due to damage to the optic nerve to see, but with an intact visual cortex. This is made possible by bypassing the optic nerve and directly stimulating the visual cortex to create a visual perception.
“It will be low resolution at first, but over time, the impact will enable vision that is like super human. To set expectations correctly, the vision will be at first be low resolution, like Atari graphics, but eventually it has the potential to be better than natural vision and enable you to see in infrared, ultraviolet or even radar wavelengths, like Geordi La Forge,” said Elon Musk in March.
He noted that the sight-giving chip possesses the ability to restore vision in even the most severe cases of blindness and also works for those who have lost both eyes or were born blind, provided the visual cortex is intact.
While there was backlash on Neuralink’s sight-giving chip not being the global first, experts explained that what makes Blindsight different is that, unlike other innovative retinal implants that send signals from a camera to electrodes that go directly to retinal nerves, Blindsight is a brain implant that goes directly into the visual cortex area of the brain which is why Blindsight will work on people who are born blind, unlike others which doesn’t.
In its other work-in-progress projects, Business World reports that Neuralink is also developing an implant that enables paralysed individuals to control digital devices with their thoughts. The company is also reported to be conducting a clinical trial with three participants to evaluate the device’s effectiveness in aiding individuals with spinal cord injuries.
As Neuralink continues to record significant milestones, the value of Musk’s companies has soared over the last four years, though Neuralink remains one of the smaller parts of his empire. SpaceX raised money at a $180 billion valuation in August, but was valued on the secondary market at $350 billion by December 2024, according to PitchBook data. His newest venture, xAI, was worth $80 billion when it merged with X to create a combined company worth $113 billion.
