April 22, 2025 • 35 mins
Last year was a big year for Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant company, seeing as it made headlines by successfully inserting a chip into a human’s brain. Soon the world may marvel at a quadriplegic man playing chess using nothing but his mind. And while there are other companies in the field of neurotechnology, Neuralink has received outsized attention thanks to its deeply controversial founder. His ultimate ambitions are lofty—including characteristically extreme claims of products that can enable mental control of robotic limbs or substitute spoken communication all together.
But brainwave-powered chess aside, as the South Africa native becomes more famous (or infamous) for his role as President Donald Trump’s government-gutting deputy than co-founder of an embattled electric car company, Neuralink has managed to endure his notoriety. In this week’s episode, David Papadopoulos catches up with Bloomberg technology editor Sarah Frier to discuss what Neuralink has been up to, how its fundraising is going and what the company’s plans are for 2025. Also, Papadopoulos talks with Musk reporter Dana Hull and Bloomberg Businessweek senior writer Max Chafkin about Tuesday’s Tesla earnings call. Coming at a tumultuous time for the company, Musk has promised it will also be a “company update.” Chafkin and Hull break down what to expect.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Let me tell you
we have a new star. A star is born.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Elon comes up on Mars Juson Kennemy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight
percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are up
in fourth post.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds us of that we don't
have a fourth branch of governments called Elon Musk. Welcome
to elan Ing, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday,
(00:50):
April twenty second. I'm your host, David Papadopoulos, now sometimes
lost in the shuffle of all things Elon is one
of his most high tech and potentially consequential companies, Neuralink.
Last year, the company managed to insert a chip in
the brain of a paralyzed man that allows him, to,
among other things, move the pieces of an online chessboard
(01:11):
just by thinking, which is pretty cool. The company has
big Glance for twenty twenty five and is trying to
move fast in an industry that is quickly heating up.
So I asked Sarah Friar, longtime regular on this show,
to hop on and catch us all up on the
race to control human brain waves. But first, it's Tesla
earnings day. Now, I know, I know it can often
(01:34):
seem like every Tesla earnings call is a do or
die moment for Elon, but this one really does feel big,
with Doze a lightning rod of controversy, Tesla's sales and
stock price sinking, and global protest raging. Even longtime Tesla
bulls are worried, very worried that permanent damage has been
done to the brand. So when Elon takes the mic
(01:56):
this evening, the stakes will be very high to talk
about what to expect from the earnings report and the call,
and what Elon can and cannot achieve on it. I'm
sitting here with our regulars, Max Chafkin and Dana Hull.
Max Elo to you, sir, Hello David, Hey Danna, Hello again,
Hey Danna. So Dana. I will note that as I
(02:19):
was being the good Bloomberg employee, I am working hard
at night Sunday night, I saw a story with the
headline drop Tesla bull calls Code Red saying Musk needs
to leave Doge, this is our good friend, the bull
of bulls. Dan ives the man who is to Tesla
(02:41):
bulls what Max Chafkin is to mets fandom. Okay, and
you have him quoted in here from his report, Danna
saying Tesla is Musk, and Musk is Tesla, and anyone
thinks the brand damage Musk has inflicted is not a
real thing, just spend some time speaking to car buyers
in the US, Europe and Asia. Then, Dana, just minutes
(03:05):
before we came up to record this show, you dropped
this piece. Treasurers of eight US states, including California and Illinois,
shot a letter to the Tesla board that essentially says, Hey,
Tesla board, the company is driverless. There are no driverless cars,
but we do have a driver less company. Where's the CEO?
(03:26):
Why aren't you bringing the CEO to heal? So it
strikes me that on the cusp of this earnings call,
the mood is getting bleaker by the minute.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
This is all true, and at the same time, like
I feel like I'm in groundhog Day because I have
been at this very point countless other times, like most
recently when Musk bought Twitter, which is now called X
And like the board and these pension funds and these
states like all went through the same exercise. So it's like,
I don't want to downplay the severity of the crisis
(03:58):
that Tesla is in, just want a table set by
saying that I have been here before. And typically what
happens is things are dire. Investors are upset. There's all
this like scrambling. People are like, why doesn't Tesla have
a COO or a president? What's the succession plan? Why
doesn't Elon ever focus on this company? And then he
pulls something out of a hat and he gives investors
(04:18):
enough to be excited about, whether it's AI or the
ROBOTAXI or his end to end neural nets or whatever
that like they get like excited again about the rosy future.
And so once again we're coming into an earnings call where, yes,
like sales in the first quarter were terrible, gross margins
are going to be terrible. Free clash flow is something
(04:40):
to look at, but like investors already know that it's
a terrible quarter. So what's going to be important is
Elon's tone on the call, and Max and I often
like text each other like, oh today we have dire Elon.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Or oh no, he's actually embulent Elon.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
And I think the big question is he going to
say in his prepared remarks his time at Doze is
coming to an end? Or are any of the cell
side analysts actually gonna have the balls to ask him
when he's coming back, or or are they going to
avoid it completely like that is the elephant in the room,
Like the brand damage is all because of his work.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
With Doje and Max, that is true that there's always
been some sort of rabbit in the hat that Elon
has been able to pull out in these earnings calls
and hey, look over here, don't mind the fundamentals or
this or that. Look at what's coming in three months,
six months, twelve years, thirty years. That's what you should
be excited about. My question is, given what we've seen
(05:35):
in the last few months and the state of affairs
there at Tesla, are those rabbits gonna work Unless the
rabbit is I. Elon musk Am leaving Doge in the
next twenty four hours and I will start paying it,
really paying attention to Tessel, along with SpaceX and XAI
and neuralink and all these other things. But no, I'm
(05:58):
really doing that. I'm really leaving doge. Okay, that would
be a hell of a rabbit. Do the other rabbits
work Right now, I.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Think it's getting harder to see what he could say, because,
as Dana is saying, like for years now, he has
been trying to spin the story forward towards driverless cars,
towards humanoid robots, towards giant supercomputers or whatever, and like
at a certain point there's the like, okay, like show
(06:27):
me the money, show me the driverless car. I mean,
Tesla's shareholders have been very patient with Elon Musk, and
I think, like there's no reason to think that their
patience is gonna instantly zap that Kathy Wood and her Ilk,
who have been basically counting on the Robotaxi to create
this enormous, you know, multi trillion dollar economy that will
(06:50):
essentially like replace the entire auto industry. Like, I don't
think enough has changed to cause them to doubt that thesis.
So I think it is more likely that we're gonna
hear more of the same from Elon Musk, he's going
to talk about the Austin Robotaxi like they are framing
this as an earnings call and a company update. Like
(07:11):
my prediction is that the company update is just it's
kind of the thing we know about. It's that there
there's gonna be some sort of Robotaxi trial in Austin
in June soon. And I think you're absolutely right, David,
that if Elon Musk said now, the way I think
you framed it is not how.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
He would do it.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
What he would do is he would declare victory. He
would say, you know, we've successfully remade the government.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
We brought the bureaucrats down.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
Now I feel like it's safe to go back to Tesla.
I don't know that he is ready to do that.
I haven't seen a lot of signs that he is
withdrawing from Trump. It does seem like Trump World is
maybe attempting to put a little bit of distance between
itself and Elon. But I'm not sure Elon is ready
to quit Trump. And at the end of the day,
(07:57):
I don't know that Trump is ready to quit Elon.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
A couple of things I want to mention. You know,
the macro environment is crappy. I mean, treasury yields are rising,
the stock market is tanking, like we're everyone is talking
about a recession. This tariff policy that has everyone super
confused is not good. And Tesla is not immune from tariffs.
I mean they import a lot of their supply chain,
including their LFP batteries come from China. So that's like
(08:22):
a whole other thing that is weighing on the stock
besides Elan and DOEZ. It's just like the macro environment
is awful. Interest rates are still really high. People typically
do not buy cars when interest rates are high and
when people are losing their jobs left and right. So
that's like a whole other thing is is the tariff implication.
But then there's also just continuing, continuing market confusion about
(08:42):
this idea that Tesla is going to come out with
a cheaper car like Ed Ludlow and I reported a
year ago that there really is no cheaper car. Like
the quote unquote cheaper mass market car is maybe like
a cheaper version of the Model Y and the Model
three that's like lower range decontent, but like there's no
new model. And you know, a couple of quarters ago,
(09:05):
Tesla said, oh, we're going to be making this cheaper
car in the first half of the year. Now, Reuter's
had a history out saying that that has been delayed,
but it's like, of course it's delayed, like it's not
really a new model. So I just think that Tesla
picked very clearly, like a year ago, that like the
future is AI autonomy, robots and not high volumes.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
So but that's another thing that people are going to
be looking for.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
They've achieved that the volumes are going down fast, and
they're one new rollout, the cyber truck, which you know,
it's funny. We have mentioned on the show that it
hasn't gotten off to a roaring start, but I guess
it was only this morning that I saw the actual numbers.
And you guys feel free to yell at me if
you've said these numbers on the show and I just
(09:50):
failed to properly pay attention. But apparently Cox Automotive estimates
that cyber truck sales dropped f fifty percent first quarter
versus fourth quarter. Now, I know there's some you know,
imperfections about doing a quarter on quarter comparison like that,
but still, Jesus Christ, I mean, come on, you should
(10:12):
be they should be ramping up wildly right.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Well, they've had a lot of recalls of the cyber truck,
and the cyber truck is still expensive. And the fourth
quarter is always the big quarter because you know there's
a big sort of end of the year push. But yeah, no,
the cyber truck is a I mean, cyber truck is
not a big selling you're about to.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Say disaster that you were going to say disaster. Is
it a disaster, Dana Hall.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
But the other thing that I think so funny is
that the cyber truck, of all the cars and Tesla's
line up, is like the epitome of Elon Musk himself.
So that's why you're seeing like dog walkers in Brooklyn
leaving their like you know, bags on the car of
the truck where it is the epitome of Elon himself
because he wanted this thing. His other executives wanted, like
(10:55):
you know, to go high volume. Like the cyber truck
is Elon, and Elon is the cyber truck. So as
much as the backlash is impacting the brand, it is
that vehicle that is that is burying the front of it.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
It's the new Elon. It's the it's the trolling, social
media addicted you know, hyper partisan Trump supporter version of Elon.
Of course, like the Model three is also Elon. I
mean that, And that is the thing that like is
so weird about what has happened. Like Tesla was able
to break the mold essentially for an automaker in a
(11:27):
bunch of different ways, and and one of the things
that had going for it was Elon Musk and the
brand that he has like cultivated around himself. And what
we've seen is like taking that asset, that thing that.
Speaker 6 (11:40):
Made Tesla special and made it so successful and throwing
it in the wood chipper along with USAID and you know,
and other parts of the federal government.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Now, one thing we haven't mentioned yet is optimists going
to space or are we going to get a lot
of optimist talk on this call? Optimist the robot.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Oh yeah, come on sure.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I mean, hey, Musk says that Optimist is going to
go to Mars on starship by like the end of
next year, and he's very excited about Optimists.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
I mean that is like.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
I think on the last call you talked about optimists
more than the ROBOTAXI. So yeah, I'm sure we'll get
an optimist update.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
The other thing that I think is just so weird
about the earnings calls and Max and I have listened
to like so many of them over the years, is
that they never introduced who the other executives are, so like,
I'm always right, I'm.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Always in ode.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Never they never say and now we're gonna hear from
you know, like so and so who leads like autopilot software,
like Elon talks and then like some other random executive.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Pipes, you ain't Elon Musk, You're just you're just a sidekick,
an anonymous, faceless sidekick.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I mean, like multiple chats and everyone's like who's speaking,
And I'm like, you know, this sounds like Lars. Oh no,
it's not, that's Franz like whatever. You know, so we
don't bother introducing the other executives. And then even if
the other executives talk, Elon talks over them and interrupts them.
It's just like it's unlike any other earnings call.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That you've ever listened to.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
And it's like, I'm so Max and I are so
used to it because we usually play bingo, But like
if you've never listened to a Tesla earnings call. You
really should. It will give you a lot of insight
into how these things go. And it's also just frankly
like so disappointing. I mean, could I say this on
a Bloomberg show. Like the Shell side analysts, they're all
about their trying to perfect their models. They don't actually
(13:33):
ask the hard questions. The best person who really would
try to nail Elon on particulars was Tony Sacandagia Bernstein,
and he retired.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
But Van Ives has worked up as he is right now,
goes out and grills Elon with a tough question or two.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
He's never He's almost never gets called on to ask
the questions.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Okay, okay, Max, we need to wrap up here on Tesla,
but let me ask you this before we do. Uh
Test has been saying, this isn't just a quarterly earnings report,
it's a company update. Are they're already starting to spin
us here? We got some big grand reveal.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
I mean I think he needs given how poor we're
expecting the earnings to be, given how bad the sales
have been, I think he's going to be looking for
some way, as we've been talking about, to spin this forward.
And I think that company update it could be as
as Danna said, an update about the way that the
CEO is spending his time, although again I'm not I
(14:33):
kind of doubt it that it could be an update
about Rubotaxi efforts in Austin, and or it could be
about something further down the pipe. And I think you
asked Anna about optimists. It is certain he will bring
up optimists because what Elon Musk has done always has done,
is has found ways to sort of push the camera
(14:55):
out like the focal point way into the future to
this like really optim mystic future. And at this point,
like robotaxis are kind of real, and they're also kind
of obviously underwhelming. And so you know, Weimo has been
doing the thing that Elon Musk has has been promising
for years and at last I checked, it hasn't created
(15:18):
a thirty trillion dollar industry. So like, as we get
closer to the actual rollout of the robotaxi whatever it is,
and I promise you it's not going to be a
coast to coast, it's not going to be like, really
a robotax is going to be like Weimo or something
in one city which has been happening for years and years.
So Elon's going to have to find some other way
(15:38):
to keep that focal point in the future. And I think,
you know, Humanoi wrote a robots probably what it is?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Well, well, this is now truly the last thought I
will leave you guys with on this that our good
friend of the pod, Esha Day, and her piece previewing
the earnings this morning had a quote from somebody saying,
because the stock, as much as Tesla's stock is, it's
still trades at seventy eight times forward earnings, which for
(16:04):
those who aren't familiar with that metric, it's an incredible
a lot of times for forward earnings. And the quote
from this one investor is of all the stocks and
the Magnificent seven, the tech stocks in Meg seven, it
is Tesla whose valuation is almost entirely about the future. Basically,
Max the stock is bulled ah.
Speaker 6 (16:25):
And that's the thing, like it could be.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
I think one of the big sort of like misunderstandings
of Elon Musk's support for Donald Trump is this sense
that like he was coming from a place of strength,
and of course he was, he's the world's richest man.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
But in other ways this is a company that.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
Has always kind of been teetering, and it's always halfway
between you know, taking over the world and like wildly
underperforming expectations. And that's why Dana people like Dana me
are a little bit like, you know, like why it's
hard to get ex excited about anyone calls like, oh,
this is going to be I mean, we are excited
(17:04):
because this is our super Bowl, but you know, we
see this movie every three months, so so like yeah,
like I don't think this is going to be the
thing that does Elon as CEO of Tesla like you know,
but but on the other hand.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
We we live in we live in crazy times.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
I just want to say one thing, Nothing will compare
as crazy.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
As now is with Trump.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Nothing will compare to twenty eighteen, which, lest I remind you,
is the year that Tesla struggled to ramp up the
model three. Yes, Elon tried to take the company private
through the four to twenty thing. He smoked pot with
Joe Rogan. He called the tie Cave Rescuer a pedo guy.
Executives are quitting left and right, like in real time,
including the chief accounting officer. Like I like that that
(17:45):
would be for me is is twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Those are all good points to which you know, I
would say so Max, at the time that Dan is describing,
maybe truly the company was teetering. It was trying to
scale up and get to to where it is now.
I don't think the company is teetering so much now.
I think it's not. When you it's not.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
Still have a car company, yeah right, What you have
is a stock right that is just incredibly valued even
after a fifty percent drop.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
That's the you know, the big question. So when I said,
I should also reframe it. The stock is in bulk,
but boy, there's a lot of hocus pocus there. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
Yeah, the Tesla the business is has a very good
business and drinking. But the stock, yeah yeah, Tesla. The
stock though, as you're saying, as ESA's saying, like it
it is entirely a lot of that value is is
about is about the future and about assumptions that the
market has made and that I'm not totally sure like
(18:50):
why like what like what the what whether there's much
of a basis in reality for those those assumptions.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Dana, thank you as always, Thanks thank you. Okay, so
now I'm joined by one of the OG's of the show,
Sarah Friar, big tech team leader here at Bloomberg. Sarah,
great to have you on. Thanks for having me, Okay, Sarah.
(19:18):
So we're going to talk now about one of Elon's
companies that, well, for us at least, it's kind of
fallen off the radar just because it's been drowned out
by Tesla and Doze and Doze and Doze and SpaceX
and Tesla and Dose do And that's Neuralink, which is
(19:40):
a pretty fascinating company, but that just again just doesn't
make news every second of every day for starters. Remind
our listeners what exactly Neuralink is and where it was
as we last understood it, so that we can get
into new developments.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Must be nice to be at the Musk company that's
not under the microscope, not super involved with what's going
on in DC thinking about the future, like that's the
sweet spot right.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Just quietly beavering away doing their work.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So, Neuralink is one of Musk's companies that is in
the business of putting chips in people's brains to help
them do things that their bodies can't do. Right now,
they're focusing on quadriplegics, people who have no ability to
use their arms or legs, and they've only had so
(20:34):
far publicly three patients for this device, which again involves
surgical implantation in the brain, attaching electrodes to your brain
tissue to help you move a cursor on a computer
to help you to make your needs known via your
(20:56):
actual brain waves. Musk has talked about eventually leading us
to symbiosis with artificial intelligence. That's extremely far away from
the current reality, which is still very exciting, which is
that they have this human trial that started last year
where they are implanting devices into people's brains for real.
(21:22):
They put their first chip in a patient named Nolan Arba.
We talked about that on the podcast in the past.
Since then, they've implanted the device in a few more people,
and they've improved the technique.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
For a second, before we talk about that and the
improvement in the technique, tell us about Nolan Arbaugh and
what made him the right candidate for this chip.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Well, Nolan Arba was a quadriphlegic, so he fit the
parameters of what they needed to prove that they could
actually make something that read somebody's thoughts that would allow
him to now, for instance, play video games independently, which
is really remarkable. This is on the road to helping
(22:09):
with other motor conditions such as Parkinson's.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
They have a few.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Initiatives looking into how they could work on vision this
breakthrough status Project breakthrough status is what the FDA gives
you if you're working on something that is so important
it should be accelerated. Neuralink has one called blind Site,
which is supposed to help with eye issues. So unfortunately
(22:39):
for our ba, some of the electrodes detached from his
brain tissue over the course of wearing the implant, and
so the company had to rectify that, and so with
future patients what they did, and then they now had
total of three, and there was a second later in
twenty twenty four. Then there was somebody early in twenty
(23:01):
twenty five. This year they've tried to reduce the space
between the chip and the brain no air bubbles. Now,
even though this is a company that is relatively quiet
in the muscaverse, this is going to be a big
year for them. They've said that there might be twenty
to thirty more patients this year.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Well, wha wha, wha. So you go from basically, if
my math is right, one not even one a quarter,
one every four months or so. So now we're going
to be doing a few a month.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Well, that is the hope.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I think. They just said that they are opening their
prime trial, which is like basically the their integrated medical
device trial, the trial for this telepathy chip. They tweeted
saying they're calling for patients.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
So that is.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Signed to the world like listen, We're ready for more.
I think that that may have something to do also
with the amount of competition that's cropping up. There are
a lot of startups that are doing more in this
space as we speak. Just recently, just a few days ago,
Science Corp Rays over one hundred million from Cosla. They're
(24:19):
starting with a retina implant to help with with eye issues.
They also got breakthrough status from the FDA. But there
are a few other startups, Parodramics, Precision Neuroscience that are
working on similar things.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
You're saying the space is even getting more heated and
more competitive, and Neuralink was chasing to begin with, right,
But I.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Think that Neuralink was very well funded. I mean they
have more than six hundred million in funding. They last
raised in twenty twenty three at a three point five
billion valuation. I think a lot of that excitement and
funding around neuralink is linked to Elon Musk himself. And
I also think that you can't really get a way
with cutting corners in this market the way you might
(25:03):
be able to in a Tesla supply chain.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Your cut corners and people die.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yes, yes, and that would be very bad for business.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Okay, now, so you mentioned that Nolan Arbaugh is able
to play video games with his mind. Now and the
other patients, what concretely, if anything beyond playing video games
are they able to do with this technology. Understood of course,
that this technology is still developing in the ideas that
slowly but surely they're going to be able to add
(25:32):
and add and add capacity, the aspiration being at some
point that these quadriplegics are even able to stand up
and walk. But as of right now, beyond playing video games,
are they doing anything else.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
It's basically that Nolan Arba can control a computer with
his thoughts, which goes a long way in today's world.
Right you can move a cursor around and click on
things the way you would do with your hand or
use on a phone, but you can't if you're a quadriplegic.
So that opens up a lot of possibilities to communicate,
(26:08):
to make choices on the internet, and yes, to play
video games. So I think that that is the main
claim to fame at the moment. Eventually, yes, they hope
to make patients able to do all sorts of things. Again,
they plan to use this chip to work on conditions
from obesity to bipolar to Parkinson's and then eventually communication
(26:31):
between humans and computers directly, that kind of telepathic of symbiosis,
as Musk said.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, and I suppose it is possible, and I just
can't exactly. I'm just not sure what I should make
of this. But at some point we're going to be
able to simply download like entire encyclopedias into our brain
and just retain them there, and I don't know, it
all just starts getting really weird.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
It should eventually help us with memory retention, with you know,
keeping us true to our diet plans, that sort of thing.
I mean, that's all kind of what's been talked about
in this in this realm.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
I guess I just wonder this though, if I start
downloading volumes of encyclopedias into my brain, well, I still
have enough bandwidth to remember all the name all the
names of mind.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I expect that it'll be the computer that has the
volumes of encyclopedias and you just you just like access
it as you need.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
I see like it's up there in the cloud.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
And I the way we do now with the internet.
But you know, we don't have It's not like our
brains are going to have well who knows, right, I
don't know what the future holds. What I do know
is while companies like Neuralink are talking about this pie
in the sky future while working on like the direct
medical science, this idea of brain control of devices is
(27:54):
actually pretty mainstream now in tech. Saw Meta came out
with research just earlier this year on how they would
be able to determine based on brain waves what you're
going to type wow. And that's not with an invasive chip.
That's just from putting a lectures on your brain on
(28:15):
the outside. And they read people's activity while they typed
and tried to make connections.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
And the hit rate was pretty good.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
It was better than people expected. Yeah, it was pretty good.
It wasn't perfect, but it's baby steps. This is all
baby steps. What people say is happening in their research,
it's you know, these studies are very tailored to try
to like produce something narrow, Okay, but.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Any even The point is is that this is the
entire industry is tacking and tacking quickly in this direction.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Apple has a patent about reading your brain waves through
air pods and that, yeah, exactly that that sounds very mainstream.
Now that's this is all early days, but it's it's
spooky enough that the idea that your brain activity might
be accessible, yes, has caused a wave in reactions from
(29:07):
state governments. There have been some early attempts to try
to regulate the privacy of brainwave data. This is so
early in the science, but governments have seen what happened
with other technologies that have grown too quickly without regulation,
and so we've seen some states try to decide now
(29:30):
that your brain wave data should remain yours, unprivate and
not used to sell you ads or something.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Okay, now, Sarah, with most of Elon's companies, yeah, most
we initially saw when Trump was elected, and of course
Elon went to great lengths to help get him elected,
a real spike in the valuation of his companies. Kesla
initially surged wildly that, of course, for reasons stated again
(29:58):
and again on this show, has since reversed and gone
down quite a bit. But the valuation of many of
his private companies SpaceX x XAI, which is now taken
over x. You mentioned that back in twenty twenty three,
Neuralink at evaluation of roughly three and a half billion dollars.
Do you know what it is today and whether it
(30:20):
also got that Trump election boost.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Well so, without a new funding round, and we haven't
heard of one happening yet, we can't say for sure
what the valuation is. But what Reuter's found middle of
last year was that there were some share trades on
the secondary market, which is the market for you know,
if we're private holders of neuralink stock, we could offload
(30:49):
that stock or trade it for something else on a
private market that's not necessarily accessible to everyone. They were
trading at five billion valuation, so that is higher, but
I would caution against saying that that doesn't mean that
Neuralink now has a five billion dollar evaluation. Reuters attributed
(31:10):
that to the interest in the company's shares just because
of Elon Musk's prominence, the fact that if you invest
in an Elon Musk company, there's going to be some
bright future for that company kind of no matter what,
because he will figure it out. That that's sort of
(31:30):
the the Elon effect, the belief around his abilities.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Any sense of whether Elon's proximity to this government, the
Trump administration, any sense that that will be helpful. There's
been a lot of speculation as to how that applies
to SpaceX and Tesla and X itself. How about for Neuralink.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
I mean, there was some concern about Musk's influence earlier
this year when those cuts resulted in the firing of
FDA staffers who were tasks with reviewing Neuralink. That was
actually reversed. Those those staffers were reinstated, according to reports.
(32:17):
But I think chaos at the FDA is not great
for any company in this kind of line of work.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
So, in other words, whereas some of his companies, terms
of other companies might benefit from less regulation, this is
a company that needs the FDA to say, hey, Neuralink,
you are now allowed to do X or Y, and you.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Can't do that unless you have FDA staffers to communicate with,
to design your clinical studies with, to make sure that
they're they're aligned with what the FDA wants to see
in order to grant approval. I mean these companies, all
the companies in the space are in very close constant
contact with the FDA about what next steps to take
(33:04):
to get to that milestone of commercial availability for their products,
which might not happen for neuralink for years. So it's
very important that the FDA is still in this communication
with all these device startups. They also just were clear
to start a trial in Canada, so it's not just
a US related company anymore. And certainly a lot of
(33:28):
biotech companies are working on international markets first before coming
to the US because it just can be easier. But yeah,
cuts of the FDA and also all of the cuts
in research generally at universities, Academic research is very much
a part of the building blocks for what comes next
(33:48):
in AI and neural understanding what those brain impulses actually mean.
All the research kind of builds on the foundation of
what's been there before, and so the fact that a
lot of federal funding for research in general has been
cut or has not been given to academics without intense
(34:09):
restrictions on things that have nothing to do with that research.
That's not great for a company like Neuralink or anything
in the biotech space.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Got it, Sarah, thanks again.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
This episode is produced by Stacy Wong. Anna mas Rakus
is our editor, Blake Maples handles engineering, and Dave Purcell
fact checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. The e
lining theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and
Alex Sugira. Brandon Francis Newnam is our executive producer, and
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big
(34:48):
thanks as always to our supporters Joe Weber and Brad Stone.
I'm David Papato Applis. If you have a minute, rate
and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us.
See you next week
Speaker 6 (35:01):
At the STA
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Let me tell you
we have a new star. A star is born.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Elon comes up on Mars Juson Kennemy.
Speaker 3 (00:14):
He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
I feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight
percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
But those two percent that are nasty, they are up
in fourth post.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
We are meant for great things in the United States
of America, and Elon reminds us of that we don't
have a fourth branch of governments called Elon Musk. Welcome
to elan Ing, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday,
(00:50):
April twenty second. I'm your host, David Papadopoulos, now sometimes
lost in the shuffle of all things Elon is one
of his most high tech and potentially consequential companies, Neuralink.
Last year, the company managed to insert a chip in
the brain of a paralyzed man that allows him, to,
among other things, move the pieces of an online chessboard
(01:11):
just by thinking, which is pretty cool. The company has
big Glance for twenty twenty five and is trying to
move fast in an industry that is quickly heating up.
So I asked Sarah Friar, longtime regular on this show,
to hop on and catch us all up on the
race to control human brain waves. But first, it's Tesla
earnings day. Now, I know, I know it can often
(01:34):
seem like every Tesla earnings call is a do or
die moment for Elon, but this one really does feel big,
with Doze a lightning rod of controversy, Tesla's sales and
stock price sinking, and global protest raging. Even longtime Tesla
bulls are worried, very worried that permanent damage has been
done to the brand. So when Elon takes the mic
(01:56):
this evening, the stakes will be very high to talk
about what to expect from the earnings report and the call,
and what Elon can and cannot achieve on it. I'm
sitting here with our regulars, Max Chafkin and Dana Hull.
Max Elo to you, sir, Hello David, Hey Danna, Hello again,
Hey Danna. So Dana. I will note that as I
(02:19):
was being the good Bloomberg employee, I am working hard
at night Sunday night, I saw a story with the
headline drop Tesla bull calls Code Red saying Musk needs
to leave Doge, this is our good friend, the bull
of bulls. Dan ives the man who is to Tesla
(02:41):
bulls what Max Chafkin is to mets fandom. Okay, and
you have him quoted in here from his report, Danna
saying Tesla is Musk, and Musk is Tesla, and anyone
thinks the brand damage Musk has inflicted is not a
real thing, just spend some time speaking to car buyers
in the US, Europe and Asia. Then, Dana, just minutes
(03:05):
before we came up to record this show, you dropped
this piece. Treasurers of eight US states, including California and Illinois,
shot a letter to the Tesla board that essentially says, Hey,
Tesla board, the company is driverless. There are no driverless cars,
but we do have a driver less company. Where's the CEO?
(03:26):
Why aren't you bringing the CEO to heal? So it
strikes me that on the cusp of this earnings call,
the mood is getting bleaker by the minute.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
This is all true, and at the same time, like
I feel like I'm in groundhog Day because I have
been at this very point countless other times, like most
recently when Musk bought Twitter, which is now called X
And like the board and these pension funds and these
states like all went through the same exercise. So it's like,
I don't want to downplay the severity of the crisis
(03:58):
that Tesla is in, just want a table set by
saying that I have been here before. And typically what
happens is things are dire. Investors are upset. There's all
this like scrambling. People are like, why doesn't Tesla have
a COO or a president? What's the succession plan? Why
doesn't Elon ever focus on this company? And then he
pulls something out of a hat and he gives investors
(04:18):
enough to be excited about, whether it's AI or the
ROBOTAXI or his end to end neural nets or whatever
that like they get like excited again about the rosy future.
And so once again we're coming into an earnings call where, yes,
like sales in the first quarter were terrible, gross margins
are going to be terrible. Free clash flow is something
(04:40):
to look at, but like investors already know that it's
a terrible quarter. So what's going to be important is
Elon's tone on the call, and Max and I often
like text each other like, oh today we have dire Elon.
Speaker 4 (04:53):
Or oh no, he's actually embulent Elon.
Speaker 3 (04:55):
And I think the big question is he going to
say in his prepared remarks his time at Doze is
coming to an end? Or are any of the cell
side analysts actually gonna have the balls to ask him
when he's coming back, or or are they going to
avoid it completely like that is the elephant in the room,
Like the brand damage is all because of his work.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
With Doje and Max, that is true that there's always
been some sort of rabbit in the hat that Elon
has been able to pull out in these earnings calls
and hey, look over here, don't mind the fundamentals or
this or that. Look at what's coming in three months,
six months, twelve years, thirty years. That's what you should
be excited about. My question is, given what we've seen
(05:35):
in the last few months and the state of affairs
there at Tesla, are those rabbits gonna work Unless the
rabbit is I. Elon musk Am leaving Doge in the
next twenty four hours and I will start paying it,
really paying attention to Tessel, along with SpaceX and XAI
and neuralink and all these other things. But no, I'm
(05:58):
really doing that. I'm really leaving doge. Okay, that would
be a hell of a rabbit. Do the other rabbits
work Right now, I.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Think it's getting harder to see what he could say, because,
as Dana is saying, like for years now, he has
been trying to spin the story forward towards driverless cars,
towards humanoid robots, towards giant supercomputers or whatever, and like
at a certain point there's the like, okay, like show
(06:27):
me the money, show me the driverless car. I mean,
Tesla's shareholders have been very patient with Elon Musk, and
I think, like there's no reason to think that their
patience is gonna instantly zap that Kathy Wood and her Ilk,
who have been basically counting on the Robotaxi to create
this enormous, you know, multi trillion dollar economy that will
(06:50):
essentially like replace the entire auto industry. Like, I don't
think enough has changed to cause them to doubt that thesis.
So I think it is more likely that we're gonna
hear more of the same from Elon Musk, he's going
to talk about the Austin Robotaxi like they are framing
this as an earnings call and a company update. Like
(07:11):
my prediction is that the company update is just it's
kind of the thing we know about. It's that there
there's gonna be some sort of Robotaxi trial in Austin
in June soon. And I think you're absolutely right, David,
that if Elon Musk said now, the way I think
you framed it is not how.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
He would do it.
Speaker 5 (07:29):
What he would do is he would declare victory. He
would say, you know, we've successfully remade the government.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
We brought the bureaucrats down.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
Now I feel like it's safe to go back to Tesla.
I don't know that he is ready to do that.
I haven't seen a lot of signs that he is
withdrawing from Trump. It does seem like Trump World is
maybe attempting to put a little bit of distance between
itself and Elon. But I'm not sure Elon is ready
to quit Trump. And at the end of the day,
(07:57):
I don't know that Trump is ready to quit Elon.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
A couple of things I want to mention. You know,
the macro environment is crappy. I mean, treasury yields are rising,
the stock market is tanking, like we're everyone is talking
about a recession. This tariff policy that has everyone super
confused is not good. And Tesla is not immune from tariffs.
I mean they import a lot of their supply chain,
including their LFP batteries come from China. So that's like
(08:22):
a whole other thing that is weighing on the stock
besides Elan and DOEZ. It's just like the macro environment
is awful. Interest rates are still really high. People typically
do not buy cars when interest rates are high and
when people are losing their jobs left and right. So
that's like a whole other thing is is the tariff implication.
But then there's also just continuing, continuing market confusion about
(08:42):
this idea that Tesla is going to come out with
a cheaper car like Ed Ludlow and I reported a
year ago that there really is no cheaper car. Like
the quote unquote cheaper mass market car is maybe like
a cheaper version of the Model Y and the Model
three that's like lower range decontent, but like there's no
new model. And you know, a couple of quarters ago,
(09:05):
Tesla said, oh, we're going to be making this cheaper
car in the first half of the year. Now, Reuter's
had a history out saying that that has been delayed,
but it's like, of course it's delayed, like it's not
really a new model. So I just think that Tesla
picked very clearly, like a year ago, that like the
future is AI autonomy, robots and not high volumes.
Speaker 4 (09:25):
So but that's another thing that people are going to
be looking for.
Speaker 1 (09:29):
They've achieved that the volumes are going down fast, and
they're one new rollout, the cyber truck, which you know,
it's funny. We have mentioned on the show that it
hasn't gotten off to a roaring start, but I guess
it was only this morning that I saw the actual numbers.
And you guys feel free to yell at me if
you've said these numbers on the show and I just
(09:50):
failed to properly pay attention. But apparently Cox Automotive estimates
that cyber truck sales dropped f fifty percent first quarter
versus fourth quarter. Now, I know there's some you know,
imperfections about doing a quarter on quarter comparison like that,
but still, Jesus Christ, I mean, come on, you should
(10:12):
be they should be ramping up wildly right.
Speaker 3 (10:15):
Well, they've had a lot of recalls of the cyber truck,
and the cyber truck is still expensive. And the fourth
quarter is always the big quarter because you know there's
a big sort of end of the year push. But yeah, no,
the cyber truck is a I mean, cyber truck is
not a big selling you're about to.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Say disaster that you were going to say disaster. Is
it a disaster, Dana Hall.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
But the other thing that I think so funny is
that the cyber truck, of all the cars and Tesla's
line up, is like the epitome of Elon Musk himself.
So that's why you're seeing like dog walkers in Brooklyn
leaving their like you know, bags on the car of
the truck where it is the epitome of Elon himself
because he wanted this thing. His other executives wanted, like
(10:55):
you know, to go high volume. Like the cyber truck
is Elon, and Elon is the cyber truck. So as
much as the backlash is impacting the brand, it is
that vehicle that is that is burying the front of it.
Speaker 5 (11:06):
It's the new Elon. It's the it's the trolling, social
media addicted you know, hyper partisan Trump supporter version of Elon.
Of course, like the Model three is also Elon. I
mean that, And that is the thing that like is
so weird about what has happened. Like Tesla was able
to break the mold essentially for an automaker in a
(11:27):
bunch of different ways, and and one of the things
that had going for it was Elon Musk and the
brand that he has like cultivated around himself. And what
we've seen is like taking that asset, that thing that.
Speaker 6 (11:40):
Made Tesla special and made it so successful and throwing
it in the wood chipper along with USAID and you know,
and other parts of the federal government.
Speaker 1 (11:56):
Now, one thing we haven't mentioned yet is optimists going
to space or are we going to get a lot
of optimist talk on this call? Optimist the robot.
Speaker 4 (12:05):
Oh yeah, come on sure.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
I mean, hey, Musk says that Optimist is going to
go to Mars on starship by like the end of
next year, and he's very excited about Optimists.
Speaker 4 (12:16):
I mean that is like.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
I think on the last call you talked about optimists
more than the ROBOTAXI. So yeah, I'm sure we'll get
an optimist update.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
You know.
Speaker 3 (12:23):
The other thing that I think is just so weird
about the earnings calls and Max and I have listened
to like so many of them over the years, is
that they never introduced who the other executives are, so like,
I'm always right, I'm.
Speaker 4 (12:35):
Always in ode.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
Never they never say and now we're gonna hear from
you know, like so and so who leads like autopilot software,
like Elon talks and then like some other random executive.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
Pipes, you ain't Elon Musk, You're just you're just a sidekick,
an anonymous, faceless sidekick.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
I mean, like multiple chats and everyone's like who's speaking,
And I'm like, you know, this sounds like Lars. Oh no,
it's not, that's Franz like whatever. You know, so we
don't bother introducing the other executives. And then even if
the other executives talk, Elon talks over them and interrupts them.
It's just like it's unlike any other earnings call.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
That you've ever listened to.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
And it's like, I'm so Max and I are so
used to it because we usually play bingo, But like
if you've never listened to a Tesla earnings call. You
really should. It will give you a lot of insight
into how these things go. And it's also just frankly
like so disappointing. I mean, could I say this on
a Bloomberg show. Like the Shell side analysts, they're all
about their trying to perfect their models. They don't actually
(13:33):
ask the hard questions. The best person who really would
try to nail Elon on particulars was Tony Sacandagia Bernstein,
and he retired.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
But Van Ives has worked up as he is right now,
goes out and grills Elon with a tough question or two.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
He's never He's almost never gets called on to ask
the questions.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Okay, okay, Max, we need to wrap up here on Tesla,
but let me ask you this before we do. Uh
Test has been saying, this isn't just a quarterly earnings report,
it's a company update. Are they're already starting to spin
us here? We got some big grand reveal.
Speaker 5 (14:11):
I mean I think he needs given how poor we're
expecting the earnings to be, given how bad the sales
have been, I think he's going to be looking for
some way, as we've been talking about, to spin this forward.
And I think that company update it could be as
as Danna said, an update about the way that the
CEO is spending his time, although again I'm not I
(14:33):
kind of doubt it that it could be an update
about Rubotaxi efforts in Austin, and or it could be
about something further down the pipe. And I think you
asked Anna about optimists. It is certain he will bring
up optimists because what Elon Musk has done always has done,
is has found ways to sort of push the camera
(14:55):
out like the focal point way into the future to
this like really optim mystic future. And at this point,
like robotaxis are kind of real, and they're also kind
of obviously underwhelming. And so you know, Weimo has been
doing the thing that Elon Musk has has been promising
for years and at last I checked, it hasn't created
(15:18):
a thirty trillion dollar industry. So like, as we get
closer to the actual rollout of the robotaxi whatever it is,
and I promise you it's not going to be a
coast to coast, it's not going to be like, really
a robotax is going to be like Weimo or something
in one city which has been happening for years and years.
So Elon's going to have to find some other way
(15:38):
to keep that focal point in the future. And I think,
you know, Humanoi wrote a robots probably what it is?
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Well, well, this is now truly the last thought I
will leave you guys with on this that our good
friend of the pod, Esha Day, and her piece previewing
the earnings this morning had a quote from somebody saying,
because the stock, as much as Tesla's stock is, it's
still trades at seventy eight times forward earnings, which for
(16:04):
those who aren't familiar with that metric, it's an incredible
a lot of times for forward earnings. And the quote
from this one investor is of all the stocks and
the Magnificent seven, the tech stocks in Meg seven, it
is Tesla whose valuation is almost entirely about the future. Basically,
Max the stock is bulled ah.
Speaker 6 (16:25):
And that's the thing, like it could be.
Speaker 5 (16:27):
I think one of the big sort of like misunderstandings
of Elon Musk's support for Donald Trump is this sense
that like he was coming from a place of strength,
and of course he was, he's the world's richest man.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
But in other ways this is a company that.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
Has always kind of been teetering, and it's always halfway
between you know, taking over the world and like wildly
underperforming expectations. And that's why Dana people like Dana me
are a little bit like, you know, like why it's
hard to get ex excited about anyone calls like, oh,
this is going to be I mean, we are excited
(17:04):
because this is our super Bowl, but you know, we
see this movie every three months, so so like yeah,
like I don't think this is going to be the
thing that does Elon as CEO of Tesla like you know,
but but on the other hand.
Speaker 6 (17:15):
I don't know.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
We we live in we live in crazy times.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
I just want to say one thing, Nothing will compare
as crazy.
Speaker 4 (17:21):
As now is with Trump.
Speaker 3 (17:23):
Nothing will compare to twenty eighteen, which, lest I remind you,
is the year that Tesla struggled to ramp up the
model three. Yes, Elon tried to take the company private
through the four to twenty thing. He smoked pot with
Joe Rogan. He called the tie Cave Rescuer a pedo guy.
Executives are quitting left and right, like in real time,
including the chief accounting officer. Like I like that that
(17:45):
would be for me is is twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Those are all good points to which you know, I
would say so Max, at the time that Dan is describing,
maybe truly the company was teetering. It was trying to
scale up and get to to where it is now.
I don't think the company is teetering so much now.
I think it's not. When you it's not.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
Still have a car company, yeah right, What you have
is a stock right that is just incredibly valued even
after a fifty percent drop.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
That's the you know, the big question. So when I said,
I should also reframe it. The stock is in bulk,
but boy, there's a lot of hocus pocus there. Yeah.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
Yeah, the Tesla the business is has a very good
business and drinking. But the stock, yeah yeah, Tesla. The
stock though, as you're saying, as ESA's saying, like it
it is entirely a lot of that value is is
about is about the future and about assumptions that the
market has made and that I'm not totally sure like
(18:50):
why like what like what the what whether there's much
of a basis in reality for those those assumptions.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Dana, thank you as always, Thanks thank you. Okay, so
now I'm joined by one of the OG's of the show,
Sarah Friar, big tech team leader here at Bloomberg. Sarah,
great to have you on. Thanks for having me, Okay, Sarah.
(19:18):
So we're going to talk now about one of Elon's
companies that, well, for us at least, it's kind of
fallen off the radar just because it's been drowned out
by Tesla and Doze and Doze and Doze and SpaceX
and Tesla and Dose do And that's Neuralink, which is
(19:40):
a pretty fascinating company, but that just again just doesn't
make news every second of every day for starters. Remind
our listeners what exactly Neuralink is and where it was
as we last understood it, so that we can get
into new developments.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
Must be nice to be at the Musk company that's
not under the microscope, not super involved with what's going
on in DC thinking about the future, like that's the
sweet spot right.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
Just quietly beavering away doing their work.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So, Neuralink is one of Musk's companies that is in
the business of putting chips in people's brains to help
them do things that their bodies can't do. Right now,
they're focusing on quadriplegics, people who have no ability to
use their arms or legs, and they've only had so
(20:34):
far publicly three patients for this device, which again involves
surgical implantation in the brain, attaching electrodes to your brain
tissue to help you move a cursor on a computer
to help you to make your needs known via your
(20:56):
actual brain waves. Musk has talked about eventually leading us
to symbiosis with artificial intelligence. That's extremely far away from
the current reality, which is still very exciting, which is
that they have this human trial that started last year
where they are implanting devices into people's brains for real.
(21:22):
They put their first chip in a patient named Nolan Arba.
We talked about that on the podcast in the past.
Since then, they've implanted the device in a few more people,
and they've improved the technique.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
For a second, before we talk about that and the
improvement in the technique, tell us about Nolan Arbaugh and
what made him the right candidate for this chip.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Well, Nolan Arba was a quadriphlegic, so he fit the
parameters of what they needed to prove that they could
actually make something that read somebody's thoughts that would allow
him to now, for instance, play video games independently, which
is really remarkable. This is on the road to helping
(22:09):
with other motor conditions such as Parkinson's.
Speaker 4 (22:13):
They have a few.
Speaker 2 (22:16):
Initiatives looking into how they could work on vision this
breakthrough status Project breakthrough status is what the FDA gives
you if you're working on something that is so important
it should be accelerated. Neuralink has one called blind Site,
which is supposed to help with eye issues. So unfortunately
(22:39):
for our ba, some of the electrodes detached from his
brain tissue over the course of wearing the implant, and
so the company had to rectify that, and so with
future patients what they did, and then they now had
total of three, and there was a second later in
twenty twenty four. Then there was somebody early in twenty
(23:01):
twenty five. This year they've tried to reduce the space
between the chip and the brain no air bubbles. Now,
even though this is a company that is relatively quiet
in the muscaverse, this is going to be a big
year for them. They've said that there might be twenty
to thirty more patients this year.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Well, wha wha, wha. So you go from basically, if
my math is right, one not even one a quarter,
one every four months or so. So now we're going
to be doing a few a month.
Speaker 4 (23:36):
Well, that is the hope.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
I think. They just said that they are opening their
prime trial, which is like basically the their integrated medical
device trial, the trial for this telepathy chip. They tweeted
saying they're calling for patients.
Speaker 4 (23:53):
So that is.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Signed to the world like listen, We're ready for more.
I think that that may have something to do also
with the amount of competition that's cropping up. There are
a lot of startups that are doing more in this
space as we speak. Just recently, just a few days ago,
Science Corp Rays over one hundred million from Cosla. They're
(24:19):
starting with a retina implant to help with with eye issues.
They also got breakthrough status from the FDA. But there
are a few other startups, Parodramics, Precision Neuroscience that are
working on similar things.
Speaker 1 (24:34):
You're saying the space is even getting more heated and
more competitive, and Neuralink was chasing to begin with, right,
But I.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Think that Neuralink was very well funded. I mean they
have more than six hundred million in funding. They last
raised in twenty twenty three at a three point five
billion valuation. I think a lot of that excitement and
funding around neuralink is linked to Elon Musk himself. And
I also think that you can't really get a way
with cutting corners in this market the way you might
(25:03):
be able to in a Tesla supply chain.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Your cut corners and people die.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Yes, yes, and that would be very bad for business.
Speaker 1 (25:11):
Okay, now, so you mentioned that Nolan Arbaugh is able
to play video games with his mind. Now and the
other patients, what concretely, if anything beyond playing video games
are they able to do with this technology. Understood of course,
that this technology is still developing in the ideas that
slowly but surely they're going to be able to add
(25:32):
and add and add capacity, the aspiration being at some
point that these quadriplegics are even able to stand up
and walk. But as of right now, beyond playing video games,
are they doing anything else.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
It's basically that Nolan Arba can control a computer with
his thoughts, which goes a long way in today's world.
Right you can move a cursor around and click on
things the way you would do with your hand or
use on a phone, but you can't if you're a quadriplegic.
So that opens up a lot of possibilities to communicate,
(26:08):
to make choices on the internet, and yes, to play
video games. So I think that that is the main
claim to fame at the moment. Eventually, yes, they hope
to make patients able to do all sorts of things. Again,
they plan to use this chip to work on conditions
from obesity to bipolar to Parkinson's and then eventually communication
(26:31):
between humans and computers directly, that kind of telepathic of symbiosis,
as Musk said.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, and I suppose it is possible, and I just
can't exactly. I'm just not sure what I should make
of this. But at some point we're going to be
able to simply download like entire encyclopedias into our brain
and just retain them there, and I don't know, it
all just starts getting really weird.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
It should eventually help us with memory retention, with you know,
keeping us true to our diet plans, that sort of thing.
I mean, that's all kind of what's been talked about
in this in this realm.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
I guess I just wonder this though, if I start
downloading volumes of encyclopedias into my brain, well, I still
have enough bandwidth to remember all the name all the
names of mind.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
I expect that it'll be the computer that has the
volumes of encyclopedias and you just you just like access
it as you need.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
I see like it's up there in the cloud.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
And I the way we do now with the internet.
But you know, we don't have It's not like our
brains are going to have well who knows, right, I
don't know what the future holds. What I do know
is while companies like Neuralink are talking about this pie
in the sky future while working on like the direct
medical science, this idea of brain control of devices is
(27:54):
actually pretty mainstream now in tech. Saw Meta came out
with research just earlier this year on how they would
be able to determine based on brain waves what you're
going to type wow. And that's not with an invasive chip.
That's just from putting a lectures on your brain on
(28:15):
the outside. And they read people's activity while they typed
and tried to make connections.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
And the hit rate was pretty good.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
It was better than people expected. Yeah, it was pretty good.
It wasn't perfect, but it's baby steps. This is all
baby steps. What people say is happening in their research,
it's you know, these studies are very tailored to try
to like produce something narrow, Okay, but.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Any even The point is is that this is the
entire industry is tacking and tacking quickly in this direction.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
Apple has a patent about reading your brain waves through
air pods and that, yeah, exactly that that sounds very mainstream.
Now that's this is all early days, but it's it's
spooky enough that the idea that your brain activity might
be accessible, yes, has caused a wave in reactions from
(29:07):
state governments. There have been some early attempts to try
to regulate the privacy of brainwave data. This is so
early in the science, but governments have seen what happened
with other technologies that have grown too quickly without regulation,
and so we've seen some states try to decide now
(29:30):
that your brain wave data should remain yours, unprivate and
not used to sell you ads or something.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Okay, now, Sarah, with most of Elon's companies, yeah, most
we initially saw when Trump was elected, and of course
Elon went to great lengths to help get him elected,
a real spike in the valuation of his companies. Kesla
initially surged wildly that, of course, for reasons stated again
(29:58):
and again on this show, has since reversed and gone
down quite a bit. But the valuation of many of
his private companies SpaceX x XAI, which is now taken
over x. You mentioned that back in twenty twenty three,
Neuralink at evaluation of roughly three and a half billion dollars.
Do you know what it is today and whether it
(30:20):
also got that Trump election boost.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
Well so, without a new funding round, and we haven't
heard of one happening yet, we can't say for sure
what the valuation is. But what Reuter's found middle of
last year was that there were some share trades on
the secondary market, which is the market for you know,
if we're private holders of neuralink stock, we could offload
(30:49):
that stock or trade it for something else on a
private market that's not necessarily accessible to everyone. They were
trading at five billion valuation, so that is higher, but
I would caution against saying that that doesn't mean that
Neuralink now has a five billion dollar evaluation. Reuters attributed
(31:10):
that to the interest in the company's shares just because
of Elon Musk's prominence, the fact that if you invest
in an Elon Musk company, there's going to be some
bright future for that company kind of no matter what,
because he will figure it out. That that's sort of
(31:30):
the the Elon effect, the belief around his abilities.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Any sense of whether Elon's proximity to this government, the
Trump administration, any sense that that will be helpful. There's
been a lot of speculation as to how that applies
to SpaceX and Tesla and X itself. How about for Neuralink.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
I mean, there was some concern about Musk's influence earlier
this year when those cuts resulted in the firing of
FDA staffers who were tasks with reviewing Neuralink. That was
actually reversed. Those those staffers were reinstated, according to reports.
(32:17):
But I think chaos at the FDA is not great
for any company in this kind of line of work.
Speaker 1 (32:28):
So, in other words, whereas some of his companies, terms
of other companies might benefit from less regulation, this is
a company that needs the FDA to say, hey, Neuralink,
you are now allowed to do X or Y, and you.
Speaker 2 (32:43):
Can't do that unless you have FDA staffers to communicate with,
to design your clinical studies with, to make sure that
they're they're aligned with what the FDA wants to see
in order to grant approval. I mean these companies, all
the companies in the space are in very close constant
contact with the FDA about what next steps to take
(33:04):
to get to that milestone of commercial availability for their products,
which might not happen for neuralink for years. So it's
very important that the FDA is still in this communication
with all these device startups. They also just were clear
to start a trial in Canada, so it's not just
a US related company anymore. And certainly a lot of
(33:28):
biotech companies are working on international markets first before coming
to the US because it just can be easier. But yeah,
cuts of the FDA and also all of the cuts
in research generally at universities, Academic research is very much
a part of the building blocks for what comes next
(33:48):
in AI and neural understanding what those brain impulses actually mean.
All the research kind of builds on the foundation of
what's been there before, and so the fact that a
lot of federal funding for research in general has been
cut or has not been given to academics without intense
(34:09):
restrictions on things that have nothing to do with that research.
That's not great for a company like Neuralink or anything
in the biotech space.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Got it, Sarah, thanks again.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 4 (34:19):
Take care.
Speaker 1 (34:27):
This episode is produced by Stacy Wong. Anna mas Rakus
is our editor, Blake Maples handles engineering, and Dave Purcell
fact checks. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson. The e
lining theme is written and performed by Taka Yasuzawa and
Alex Sugira. Brandon Francis Newnam is our executive producer, and
Sage Bauman is the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. A big
(34:48):
thanks as always to our supporters Joe Weber and Brad Stone.
I'm David Papato Applis. If you have a minute, rate
and review our show, it'll help other listeners find us.
See you next week
Speaker 6 (35:01):
At the STA
Host
David Papadopoulos
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