Dubai-based venture capital firm Vy Capital led a USD205 million Series C funding round of the Elon Musk-founded brain-machine interface company Neuralink.
In a statement, the company said: “Neuralink is pleased to announce our Series C funding round of $205 million, led by Vy Capital, with participation from Google Ventures, DFJ Growth, Valor Equity Partners, Craft Ventures, Founders Fund and Gigafund.
Neuralink has spent the last four years building the first high channel count brain machine interface intended for therapeutic use in patients.
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.
“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 statement added.
“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.”
Neuralink was founded by Elon Musk to help those with brain injuries in the near term and reduce AI risk to humanity in the long term. The company’s mission is to develop brain-machine interfaces that treat various brain related ailments, with the eventual goal of creating a whole brain interface capable of more closely connecting biological and artificial intelligence.
The company said that a group of leading executives and entrepreneurs in areas of strategic importance also joining the funding round, including Robert Nelson (Co-Founder of ARCH Venture Partners), Blake Byers (Byers Capital), Sam Altman (Chairman of YC Group and CEO of OpenAI), Fred Ehrsam (Co-founder of Paradigm and Coinbase) and Ken Howery (Co-Founder of PayPal and Founders Fund).
