reuters.com
www.reuters.com

Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink raised $600 million in a deal that values the company at $9 billion before the new cash, Semafor reported on Tuesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter. Neuralink did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

The startup was estimated to be valued at $5 billion in 2023, based on privately executed stock trades described to Reuters. The company had previously raised $280 million in a funding round led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund.

In April, Bloomberg News reported that the company was planning to raise about $500 million. Neuralink is in the process of testing its implant, which is intended to help people with spinal cord injuries. The device has allowed the first patient to play video games, browse the internet, post on social media and move a cursor on his laptop directly with his brain.

Earlier this month, Neuralink received the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “breakthrough” tag for its device.

Musk has expressed grand ambitions for the company, saying its chip would allow healthy and disabled people alike to pop into neighborhood facilities for speedy surgical insertions of devices to treat obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia. He even sees them being used for web-surfing and telepathy.

Certainly is an oddly timed breakup

    • KoboldCoterie@pawb.socialEnglish
      16·
      4 days ago

      Seriously, why aren’t all of the ‘Covid vaccines are implanting microchips’ conspiracy theorists losing their goddamn minds over Neuralink?

      • Kami@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        11·
        4 days ago

        Because 99% of them are Trump and Musk’s ass lickers. edit: and if they will tell them to put these chips in their brain they will do it at once.

      • kingthrillgore@lemmy.mlEnglish
        4·
        4 days ago

        Because when the antichrist (no seriously, look it up, i’m convinced Trump is the Antichrist) does it they line up and give him the good sloppy

      • Basic Glitch@lemm.eeOPEnglish
        3·
        4 days ago

        Well you need someone to control the narrative, so if there’s no one being tasked by an administration to actively spread a conspiracy, it’s harder to get people to embrace it.

        Reuters reported last summer that the Pentagon had a campaign to spread online disinformation about China’s vaccine Doesn’t really seem too far fetched to think something similar was used against Americans by the same people that would now benefit from Americans being blissfully unaware of how dangerous it is to put one of these chips in their brain. After all, it has an official breakthrough tag now, and if it was really so dangerous “why would the FDA approve it?”

        Not sure if you remember, but we were also one of the only countries that tried to downplay the effectiveness of people wearing masks during the earliest days of the pandemic. That was one I never could figure out back then, but now I’m suspicious that was also part of a targeted disinformation campaign.

        March 2020 White House seeks assistance from tech companies in fight against coronavirus

        The White House on Wednesday asked the tech industry’s top players to help the government in the fight against coronavirus, tapping the expertise of companies like Apple, Facebook and Amazon to help beat back falsehoods and use artificial intelligence to glean new insights into the fast-spreading virus.

        In a phone call, U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios implored the companies to help out with an “all-hands-on-deck effort” to fight the new coronavirus.

        According to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, top tech trade groups and companies participated in the call, including Apple, Cisco, Google, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, the Consumer Technology Association, the Information Technology Industry Council and others.

        The meeting revolved around how the tech industry can better coordinate with the government to get out authoritative facts about the coronavirus while cracking down on the spread of bunk cures and conspiracy theories spreading online.

        So with all those people and their resources controlling the narrative, why would we then be spreading misinformation about masking? Why would anybody care if large numbers of Americans were covering their face to stop the spread of disease?

        I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but I do feel like the public should be more aware that Trump’s former CTO and current science advisor, the guy who was also tasked with preventing online disinformation being spread during COVID, was also tirelessly promoting deregulated facial recognition technology long before anyone was considering that masking in public would be common in the U.S.

        Nov 2019: Trump CTO Addresses AI, Facial Recognition, Immigration, Tech Infrastructure, and More

    • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      9·
      4 days ago

      I’m kind of surprised that some of the religious crowd isn’t raising Cain about it.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_the_beast

      Revelation also references a charagma (χάραγμα), translated as mark of the beast:

      And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
      And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

      — Revelation chapter 13:16–17

      Some fundamentalist Christian groups, as well as various Christian writers in other traditions, interpret the mark as a requirement for all commerce to mean that the mark might actually be an object in the right hand or forehead with the function of a credit card, such as RFID microchip implants.[78] Some of these groups believe the implantation of chips may be the imprinting of the mark of the beast, prophesied to be a requirement for all trade and a precursor to God’s wrath.[79][80] Similar objections were raised about barcodes upon their introduction.[81]

      During the COVID-19 pandemic, some groups associated COVID-19 vaccines and mask wearing with the mark of the beast, or that it was a microchip in the vaccine.[82] Some religious leaders spoke out against this as a misinterpretation of Revelation 13:16-18.[83] Medical institutions such as Hennepin County Medical Center noted this in their fact sheets about the vaccine.[84] A similar version was spread by Marjorie Taylor Greene, who referred to vaccine passports as being the mark of the beast.[85]

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beast_(Revelation)

      Revelation 12-13 describes these three beasts as follows:

      1. The dragon (later revealed in the text to be Satan)[1]
      2. The beast of the sea (commonly interpreted as the Antichrist)[2][3]
      3. The beast of the earth (later revealed in the text to be the False Prophet)[4]

      In Revelation 13:1–10, the beast of the sea rises “out of the sea” and is given authority and power by the dragon. It persecutes God’s people in the 2nd part of Revelation 13. To buy and sell, everyone is required to have its name or number on their forehead or right hand (Rev 13:16-17). It speaks blasphemous words against God, will rule the world for 42 months (Revelation 13:5-7), and is described as resembling a leopard, a lion, and a bear— which are three of the animals in Daniel 7. It suffers a fatal head wound which is miraculously healed, bewildering the world’s population and causing many to worship it.