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Elon Musk reveals details on Neuralink brain-computer with human housecat prevention plan
“I don’t love the idea of being [an artificial intelligence] house cat, but what’s the solution? I think one of the solutions that seems maybe the best is to add an AI layer.” – Elon Musk, Code Conference 2016
An AI layer to your brain, he means. Not happy with simply improving technology that’s only been around for the last century, innovative entrepreneur Elon Musk has his sights set on the way humans communicate, something that hasn’t been vastly improved on in over 50,000 years of evolution.
Musk has referred to something called “neural lace” several times recently, most notably at Vox Media’s Recode Code Conference in June 2016; however, not many details were known about how Musk envisioned this technology being implemented. You know, the Musk way of doing it. He suggested at the conference that he might be willing to tackle the challenge himself, and a few months later, teased a few times that he was in fact working on the idea.
Making progress. Maybe something to announce in a few months. Have played all prior Deus Ex. Not this one yet.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2016
Maybe next month
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 25, 2017
The announcement came in the form of a startup called Neuralink Corp, the initial details for which were originally reported by the Wall Street Journal. He seemed to have collected some impressive scientific minds and combined them with personal funding to initiate the company’s work. Other than speculation about what types of products could be created by the company and Musk’s initial idea of a direct interface with the brain’s cortex, not much information was available. More recently, a few more pixels were filled in on Musk’s vision.
Tim Urban of WaitButWhy.com, one of Musk’s preferred correspondent contacts (i.e., Internet writers), has been selected again as the person given the most in-depth information and access to Musk in order to publish a very detailed piece on what Musk has been up to.
Urban previously discussed and published details about Musk’s work on SpaceX’s vision for Mars and Tesla (with lots of direct access to Musk himself), and now has published a very long, yet very informative, piece on Musk’s NeuraLink company. He calls the company’s overall goal a “Wizard Hat”, and after seeing how much access Urban had to Musk and his new Neuralink team to gather information, that label is probably pretty accurate.
In Urban’s piece, he focuses on understanding what the business side of Neuralink will involve, as it’s the business models of Tesla and SpaceX which enable and drive their innovations. “We are aiming to bring something to market that helps with certain severe brain injuries (stroke, cancer lesion, congenital) in about four years,” Musk is quoted as saying.
The incredibly complicated nature of the human brain, a multi-million year biology project in the making, unsurprisingly presents numerous challenges for scientists wanting to direct the flow of information into and out of it. Understanding all of the details of “how” the brain functions isn’t the challenge, though. It seems to come back down to engineering. As summarized by Urban, after some 1,000 interviews with multi-disciplinary (and amazing) science people, Musk put his team together and Neuralink Corp. was born to start working on it.
The first major challenge described in Urban’s piece is the concept of bandwidth, or rather, how many brain neurons (cells in the brain which essentially provide the 1’s and 0’s of brain signals) can be read by electrodes at a time. He quotes the Neuralink people as needing around a million neurons to be read in order to really achieve something revolutionary.
If you’re familiar with computer chips at all, the comparison to Moore’s Law is a decent metaphor here. According to this law, the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles every 18 months, and this has led to computers becoming both smaller and faster. If you liken “transistors” to “electrodes”, you can see the engineering challenge for neural lace companies.
Then there’s also the question of whether people are going to be willing to let their brains be voluntarily experimented with. Musk’s cult following might give him a trust advantage for seeking out willing participants, but skull surgery may turn out to be too much even for them. According to Tim Urban, the Neuralink team is acutely aware of this concern, and has thus made “non-invasive” implantation a huge focus for brain-interface technology to really take off. Also of issue is accessibility to the technology to make the implantation possible. In Urban’s discussions with him, Elon Musk likened the technology needed to what Lasik surgery machines do.
In summary, in order for Neuralink Corp. to achieve the innovative leap which will change the world forever with direct brain-interface technology (the “Wizard Hat”), they’ve got to make electrode manufacturing about as advanced as computer chip manufacturing, and they’ve got to be able to install whatever electrode device is developed into brains in a very non-invasive, automated way. Also, they will need to figure out brain-friendly WiFi, some serious miniaturization solutions, and develop a “neuron signal” to “human language” dictionary.
Easy peasy, lemon squeazy. [Yeah, that was sarcasm.]
Quite honestly, it’s not the medical procedure that concerns me, but rather the potential of not being able to block spam that has direct access to my brain. Between Minority Report and my daily email battles, yikes! Sure, there are already brain-implanted devices that solve problems; however, I think there’s a difference between correcting functions the brain is supposed to have and giving something unfiltered access to adding something that wasn’t already there. I can put my phone away if I don’t want to deal with a Twitter freak out deluge. I can’t exactly do that with my brain. You know, just saying. The WaitButWhy piece gave me even more reasons to worry, so I feel justified.
Tim Urban’s piece also detailed some pretty amazing things that could come out of the neural lace field that sound like science-based versions of telepathy and magic. The ultimate goal, though, was to enable human brains to be as functional as artificial intelligence in order to avoid all the pitfalls of superintelligent AI. Actually, to be a bit more clear on Elon Musk’s vision for all this brain-interface technology, he wants the interface to connect to a super-human-collective AI cloud which feels just as much a part of you as any other part of your brain does.
For instance, when you have a thought, you don’t consider which part of your brain’s anatomy created it. It just happens and you consider it a part of your being. Imagine a super computer as part of that “you” system, and congrats! You’re [kind of] getting where Musk is headed with Neuralink. Or at least that’s the long term goal of what he’s starting with the company. You know, kind of like the moving the baton forward thing he aimed for with SpaceX and getting to Mars.
I’m going to quote Urban on this, actually:
He started Neuralink to accelerate our pace into the Wizard Era—into a world where he says that “everyone who wants to have this AI extension of themselves could have one, so there would be billions of individual human-AI symbiotes who, collectively, make decisions about the future.” A world where AI really could be of the people, by the people, for the people.
Where Neuralink will come down amongst current competitors already in the field (Facebook, Braintree, etc.) is obviously yet to be seen, but it’s yet another reminder that when Elon Musk says there’s a challenge needing to be solved, there’s a good chance he’s not going to wait for someone else to do it.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company clears final Nashville hurdle: Music City loop is full speed ahead
The Boring Company has cleared its final Nashville hurdles, putting the Music City Loop on track for 2026.
The Boring Company has cleared one of its most significant regulatory milestones yet, securing a key easement from the Music City Center in Nashville just days ago, the latest in a series of approvals that have pushed the Music City Loop project firmly into construction reality.
On March 24, 2026, the Convention Center Authority voted to grant The Boring Company access to an easement along the west side of the Music City Center property, allowing tunneling beneath the privately owned venue. The move follows a unanimous 7-0 vote by the Metro Nashville Airport Authority on February 18, and a joint state and federal approval from the Tennessee Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration on February 25. Together, these green lights have cleared the path for a roughly 10-mile underground tunnel connecting downtown Nashville to Nashville International Airport, with potential extensions into midtown along West End Avenue.
Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption
Nashville was selected by The Boring Company largely because of its rapid population growth and the strain that growth has placed on surface infrastructure. Traffic has become a persistent problem for residents, convention visitors, and airport travelers alike. The Music City Loop promises an approximately 8-minute underground transit time between downtown and the Nashville International Airport (BNA), removing thousands of vehicles from surface roads daily while operating as a fully electric, zero-emissions system at no cost to taxpayers.
The project fits squarely within a broader vision Musk has championed for years. In responding to a breakdown of the Loop’s construction costs, Musk posted on X: “Tunnels are so underrated.” The comment reflected a longstanding belief that underground transit represents one of the most cost-effective and scalable infrastructure solutions available. The Boring Company has claimed it can build 13 miles of twin tunnels in Nashville for between $240 million and $300 million total, a fraction of what comparable projects cost elsewhere in the country.
Image Credit: The Boring Company/Twitter
The Las Vegas Loop, The Boring Company’s first operational system, has served as a proof of concept. During the CONEXPO trade show in March 2026, the Vegas Loop transported approximately 82,000 passengers over five days at the Las Vegas Convention Center, demonstrating the system’s capacity during large-scale events. Nashville draws millions of convention visitors and tourists each year, and local business leaders have pointed to that same capacity as a major draw for supporting the project.
The Music City Loop was first announced in July 2025. Construction began within hours of the February 25 state approval, with The Boring Company’s Prufrock tunneling machine already in the ground the same evening. The first operational segment is targeted for late 2026, with the full route expected to be complete by 2029. The project represents one of the largest privately funded infrastructure efforts currently underway in the United States.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s $10 Trillion robot: Inside Tesla’s push to mass produce Optimus
Tesla’s surging Optimus job listings reveal a company sprinting from prototype to one million robot production.
Tesla is accelerating its push to bring the Optimus humanoid robot to high volume production, and its recent job listings tells the story as clearly as any earnings call.
With well over 100 Optimus related job openings now posted across its U.S. facilities, Tesla is signaling a critical pivot for the program, moving it from a captivating tech demo to a serious manufacturing endeavor. Roles span the full spectrum of the product lifecycle, from Robotics Software Engineers and Manufacturing Engineers to Mechanical Integration Engineers and AI Engineers focused on world modeling and video generation. One active listing for a Software Engineer on the Optimus team asks candidates to build scalable and reliable data pipelines for Optimus manufacturing lines and develop automation tools that accelerate analysis and visualization for mass manufacturing.
Tesla is racing toward a one million unit annual production target. The clearest signal yet that Tesla is treating Optimus as its primary business came on January 28, 2026, during the company’s Q4 2025 earnings call. Musk announced that Tesla is ending production of the Model S and Model X, and will repurpose those lines at its Fremont, California factory to build Optimus humanoid robots.
A production intent prototype of Optimus Version 3 is planned to be ready in early 2026, after which Tesla intends to build a one million unit production line with a targeted production start by the end of 2026. To support that ramp, Tesla broke ground on a massive new Optimus manufacturing facility at Gigafactory Texas in late 2025, with ambitions to eventually reach 10 million units per year.
Tesla Giga Texas to feature massive Optimus V4 production line
The business case for scaling this aggressively is rooted in labor economics. Musk has stated that “Optimus has the potential to be the biggest product of all time,” reasoning that if Tesla can produce capable humanoid robots at scale and reasonable cost, every task currently performed by human labor becomes a potential application. In a separate statement, Musk framed Optimus’s long term importance even more bluntly, saying it could surpass Tesla’s vehicle business in scale with the potential to generate $10 trillion in revenue.
The industries Tesla is targeting first are those most burdened by repetitive physical labor. Early applications include manufacturing assembly, material handling and quality inspection, as well as logistics tasks like loading, unloading, sorting, and transporting goods in warehouses and distribution centers. Longer term, Tesla’s vision is for Optimus to penetrate household, medical, and logistics scenarios at the scale of a smartphone rollout.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Tunnel Vision Challenge ends with a surprise for Louisiana, Maryland and Dallas
The Boring Company stunned three cities today, awarding New Orleans, Baltimore, and Dallas free underground Loop tunnels.
Elon Musk’s The Boring Company (TBC) announced today that it is building free underground Loop tunnels in three American cities: New Orleans, Louisiana; Baltimore, Maryland; and Dallas, Texas. The company had promised one winner when it launched the Tunnel Vision Challenge in January. After receiving 487 submissions, it selected three, committing to fund and construct all of them pending a feasibility review, entirely at its own expense. For a company that has faced years of skepticism over the gap between its promises and its delivered projects, choosing to expand its commitment rather than narrow it is a notable shift in both scale and accountability.
All three projects will now enter a rigorous, fully funded diligence phase that includes meetings with elected officials, regulators, community and business leaders, geotechnical borings, and a complete investigation of subsurface utilities and infrastructure. TBC confirmed that all costs associated with this diligence process are 100% funded by the company. If all three projects pass feasibility, all three get built. If only one clears the bar, that one gets built. The company’s willingness to fund the due diligence regardless of outcome removes one of the most common early-stage barriers that kills promising infrastructure proposals before they leave a spreadsheet.
Beyond the three winners, TBC announced it will continue working with two additional entrants it found compelling enough to pursue independently: the Hendersonville Utility Tunnel in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and the Morgan’s Wonderland Tunnel in San Antonio, Texas, which would notably serve one of the nation’s premier theme parks built specifically for guests with special needs.
The challenge also coincides with TBC’s most active construction period to date. The company recently began drilling on the Music City Loop near the Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville, and in February it broke ground on a Loop in Dubai. Musk has long argued that the fundamental problem with urban infrastructure is cost and bureaucratic inertia, not engineering. “The key to solving traffic is making going 3D either up or down,” he said in 2018, a conviction now reflected in a company structure built to absorb the financial risk that typically stalls public projects for years.
Music City Loop could highlight The Boring Company’s real disruption
The Tunnel Vision Challenge’s most underappreciated element may be what it produced beyond three winners. Submissions came from individuals, companies, and governments across states including Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, and Texas, as well as from international entrants. Musk captured the underlying logic years ago when he said, “Traffic is driving me nuts. I’m going to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging.” Today, three American cities are counting on exactly that.
Tunnel Vision Challenge results!
We’ve been overwhelmed with the amazing submissions…so we are announcing three winners!
The Thrilling Three are:
– NOLA Loop (New Orleans, LA)
– Ravens Loop (Baltimore, MD)
– University Hills Loop (Dallas, TX)What happens next? TBC and the… https://t.co/cY2ULftfiK
— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) March 24, 2026
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