Elon Musk’s neurotech company Neuralink announced a $205 million Series C funding round led by Vy Capital. Google Ventures, DFJ Growth, Valor Equity Partners, Craft Ventures, Founders Fund, and Gigafund, also participated in the successful private investment round, the company said.
A group of other leading executives and entrepreneurs also contributed to Neuralink’s fundraising round. Robert Nelson, Co-Founder of ARCH Venture Partners, Blake Byers of Byers Capital, Sam Altman, Chairman of YC Group and CEO of OpenAI, Fred Ehrsam, the Co-founder of Paradigm and Coinbase, and Ken Howery Co-Founder of PayPal and Founders Fund, were among those who participated.
“We’re using this funding to accelerate our efforts to safely bring this technology to the world. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can help people in need who could benefit from a Neuralink device,” the company indicated. Neuralink has been one of Musk’s quieter ventures in recent months. The company has not made any major announcements since the unveiling of its v0.9 device in August 2020, which aims to be implanted in a human’s brain to cure a series of neurological disorders including memory loss, hearing loss, blindness paralysis, depression, insomnia, seizures, addiction, brain damage, and strokes, among others.
Neuralink has spent the last four years building brain-machine interface technology that will revolutionize the treatment of brain injuries and neurological disorders. “Our first product, the N1 Link, is a 1024 channel device that, once implanted, is completely invisible and transmits data via a wireless connection,” the company said. “The first indication this device is intended for is to help quadriplegics regain their digital freedom by allowing users to interact with their computers or phones in a high bandwidth and naturalistic way. The funds from the round will be used to take Neuralink’s first product to market and accelerate the research and development of future products.”
Neuralink has been utilizing its demonstration from 2020 to recruit new talent to its team. The company posted several jobs in Austin, Texas, where Musk seems to be moving several of his ventures, including some of Tesla’s North American production.
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