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Elon Musk Neuralink foundation was laid in the year 2016 by Elon Musk, Max Hodak, Ben Rapoport, Dongjin Seo, Paul Merolla, Philip Sabes, Tim Gardner, Tim Hanson and Vanessa Tolosa, which is basically a group of experts in areas such as neuroscience, biochemistry and robotics. The trademark of "Neuralink" was purchased from its previous owners in January of 2017.
In April 2017, Neuralink made an announcement that it was aiming to manufacture devices that will treat serious brain diseases in the short-term, with the eventual goal of human enhancement, sometimes also referred to as transhumanism. Musk told the world that his interest in the idea was partly stemmed from the science fiction concept of "neural lace" in the fictional universe in The Culture, which is a series of 10 novels by Iain M. Banks.
Musk gave a definition of the neural lace as being a "digital layer above the cortex" that would not necessarily imply extensive surgical insertion but simply an implant through a vein or artery. Musk explained that the long-term aim is to achieve "symbiosis with artificial intelligence", which he believes as an existential threat to humanity if it remains unchecked.
As of 2020, Neuralink is headquartered in San Francisco's Mission District, sharing the Pioneer building with OpenAI, which is another company co-founded by Musk. Jared Birchall, who is the head of Musk's family office, was listed as CEO, CFO and president of Neuralink in the year 2018. As of September 2018, Musk was the majority owner of Neuralink but however he did not hold an executive position.
By August 2020, only three of the eight founding scientists remained at the company, as per the article by the Stat News which has reported that Neuralink had seen "years of internal conflict in which rushed timelines have clashed with the slow and incremental pace of science."
In April 2021, Elon Musk Neuralink made a demonstration in which a monkey was playing the game "Pong" using the Neuralink implant. Although similar technology has existed since 2002, but when a research group first demonstrated a monkey moving a computer cursor with neural signals, scientists actually acknowledged the engineering progress made to make the implant wireless and increasing the number of implanted electrodes.
In May 2021, co-founder and president Max Hodak made an announcemet that he is no longer working with the company.
Elon Musk Neuralink is meanwhile working in the field of probes, robots and electronics.
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