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

  • tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
    9·
    7 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.