What do Musk, Gates, Bezos and retail investors have in common? | Benzinga Spain

3 min reading

Elon Musk It is a pioneer in various industries, from electric vehicles to space exploration. But one of the most controversial companies of this billionaire is Neuralink Corp.a neurotechnology company specializing in the development of a brain implant designed to help correct neurological disorders, as well as implantable brain-computer interfaces.

Since Musk founded the company, several startups have sprung up to compete with it. Synchronousa company that counts among its investors with Bill Gates and Jeff Bezosrecently received $75 million in venture capital to compete with Neuralink.

An unexpected group that is making millions of investments in this area are retail investors.

Retail investors bet on brain-tech

Due to recent changes in federal law, anyone can invest in high-growth startups through platforms like StartEngine and Wefunder, including the possibility of invest in StartEngine itself. These platforms host hundreds of startups and allow everyone from retail investors to billionaires to invest in high-growth startups.

The company backed by venture capital TruBrain is raising funds on the platform and has registered significant traction. TruBrain previously raised more than $2.3 million from thousands of retail investors for its FDA-approved wearable brain technology.

According to Deep Knowledge Ventures, investments in neurotech companies have increased by more than 600%, from $1.1 billion in 2014 to $7.1 billion in 2021. The neurotech market is expected to nearly triple in the next few years. 10 years, until reaching 38,000 million dollars. Although not small, the market is largely underdeveloped with no established names, making startups want to secure their position now in hopes of big returns in the future.

Many of these companies focus on medical technologies. TruBrain’s wearable technology is designed to reduce stress and anxiety. Synchron aims to restore functions lost with neuroprosthetics, allowing the restoration of neural pathways in patients with severe paralysis.

In the first months of 2022, reports emerged that Apple Inc. had begun work on a brain-computer interface (BCI) similar to Neuralink and Synchron.

While Neuralink’s technology is focused on medical uses, Musk has touted it as a means to connect the brains of individuals with each other. According to Musk, this would allow a kind of telepathy between Neuralink users. Allegedly, users could communicate with other Neuralink users using only their minds. Musk has also demonstrated the ability to communicate with electronics using Neuralink, which can be seen in the video Neuralink produced of a monkey using the technology to play the video game Pong in early 2021.