Dive Brief:
- Elon Musk’s brain implant company has raised a $280 million series D funding round weeks after securing clearance to study its device in humans.
- Founders Fund, Peter Thiel’s venture capital firm, led the investment in Neuralink, according to a post by the company on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The VC fund was part of a syndicate of investors that backed Neuralink’s $205 million series C round in 2021.
- Neuralink will use the cash to work through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s concerns with its brain-computer interface and secure authorization to start a clinical trial of the device.
Dive Insight:
Musk has made big claims since founding Neuralink in 2016, pitching its technology as both a treatment of conditions such as blindness, and a way to augment humans to compete against artificial intelligence. To start testing if those claims hold up in the clinic, Neuralink needs to address regulatory concerns.
The FDA reportedly rejected Neuralink’s first application to test the device in humans over concerns that its wires may move in the brain and its lithium battery may fail. In May, Neuralink revealed it had secured FDA clearance to run a first-in-human clinical trial but was yet to open recruitment. The series D round gives Neuralink money to take its device into the clinic.
Thiel, who started PayPal with Musk, is backing the next steps in development through Founders Fund, the VC firm he set up with two other PayPal co-founders, Luke Nosek and Ken Howery. Thiel acquired a stake in a rival to Neuralink, Blackrock Neurotech, in 2021.
Neuralink is trailing New York-based startup Synchron in the race to bring a brain-computer interface device to market. Synchron published 12-month data on four recipients of its device at the start of the year. Investment funds tied to the billionaires Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates have pumped money into Synchron.