May 21, 2024 • 33 mins
Last week, Bloomberg Businessweek published an exclusive look at Noland Arbaugh, the first person to get Elon Musk’s Neuralink technology implanted in his head. Our own Ashlee Vance spent time with Arbaugh, who lives with his parents and (as you’ll hear) some vocal farm animals. Vance joins us to talk about what he learned from the first patient in Neuralink’s inaugural clinical trial. He is joined by Bloomberg’s Sarah McBride to give a full picture on what it all means. Plus, we talk to markets reporter Kiel Porter and space reporter Loren Grush about all of the action around SpaceX stock—which is kind of interesting since it’s still a private company.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Well, Elon Muski is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 5 (00:25):
He says.
Speaker 6 (00:26):
He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
be different.
Speaker 5 (00:29):
He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
There is a reason the US government is so reliant
on him.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Anything he does, he's fascinating to people. Welcome to Elon Inc.
Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's May twenty first,
and I'm your host, Joel Webber, covering for David Papadopolos.
(00:58):
Today we're going to talk about Tooth, Bloomberg BusinessWeek's exclusive
with the first Neuralink patient, Noland Arba. He has a
pretty remarkable story becoming a human cyborg, but already things
aren't going quite as planned. In a bit, we'll hear
from Ashley Vance, who interviewed Noland, and Sarah McBride, who
covers the startup for Bloomberg Technology. But first, how do
(01:19):
you buy SpaceX investing in a private company let alone
the most highly valued unicorn in America is among the
most difficult missions around, and we have a guide for
the galaxy's most determined investors. Joining us for that crazy
mission is Lauren Grush, who covers space for Bloomberg News.
Hello Lauren, thank you. And Kyle Porter, who wrote about
(01:40):
investing in SpaceX and the new issue of Bloomberg Markets Magazine.
Hello Kyle, thanks for having us. Joe, Kyle, I'll start
with you. Elon Musk's startup is privately held and has
a valuation of about one hundred and eighty billion dollars.
It's obviously hard to buy shares, but is it impossible?
Speaker 5 (01:58):
No, it's not totally impossible, and they don't advertise for
you how to do it. But if you read our
helpful explainer or have you know a very expensive wealth manager,
you can get in.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Okay, how much money do I need?
Speaker 5 (02:13):
Well, there might be a couple of exceptions if you're
doing it friends to friends, but for the most part,
you're going to need to be an accredited investor, and
that's somebody who for the last two years has earned
income of north of two hundred thousand dollars. Or if
you're a married couple three hundred thousand dollars, or you
have a networth above a million dollars which does not
include your primary home.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Okay, so have I got fifty bucks in a Robinhood account?
This is not for me.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
No, it's not going to happen for you. What's interesting
is that, you know, accredited investors have become an increasingly
large part.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Of the market.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
The actual accreditation was developed in the nineteen eighties when
it affected about one percent of the population. Now about
twenty million households can be classes of credited investors just
through inflationary drag.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
Lauren, why would anyone want to own a privately held
startup And there's a word for startups like this who
have massive valuations and are still private, which is unicorn.
This is not a typical retail space. But why would
any investor want to have some exposure?
Speaker 7 (03:15):
I would say for two reasons. One, when it comes
to SpaceX specifically, I think there's a lot of excitement
around starlink. So the idea that you know, maybe eventually
this will become a multi billion dollar business and that
will pay out, and that will be kind of more
of a typical consumer business that would have a return
(03:35):
for investors. And then I think also the second reason
is just the cult of Elon, you know, having some
kind of stake in one of his companies I think
has an amendous, tremendous draw for a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
What are the risks though, because you know, private market
means there's no liquidity that a normal you know, publicly
traded company would really have. Right, so so what does
what does that look like? What are the risks for investors?
Speaker 7 (04:01):
Well, I think the risks are it's still not very
proven that launching rockets and being in the space business
is actually a profitably sustainable enterprise.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Right.
Speaker 7 (04:14):
All we have is a lot of what Elon tells us.
I mean, we don't have a really hard look into
SpaceX's financials. They tell us they are profitable, they tell
us they have money in the bank, but they are
also dumping a ton of money into research and development
and also to create you know, massive rockets like Starship.
They're still putting a tremendous amount of money into Starlink.
(04:36):
And when we when we have seen space companies go public,
we haven't seen a lot of great you know profitability there.
It's it's a very tough business to make work. You
have to put in a ton of upfront capital, you
spend years creating you know, these systems, and then there's
really no guarantee that you're going to get enough customers
(04:57):
that makes it work long term. So I think that
that is the risk. And when it comes to SpaceX,
you know, they seem to have broken the mold and
has shown that they can do it. But it remains
to be seen if that can be replicated or if
SpaceX is as profitable as they say they are.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Kyle, what do we know about the demand for something
like SpaceX shares?
Speaker 5 (05:17):
Oh, it's huge primary tender office were ever subscribed? There
are people queuing around the block to get into this company,
which is good news because they have burned an awful
lot of cash at the moment getting these rockets into
the air. It's part of the reason, in my humble opinion,
why they're not public yet. They don't have to disclose
that much information and they're still getting the money. I mean,
what company wouldn't won that situation.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Okay, say I've got six figures and I want to play.
What are my options? What kind of shares are available even?
And how would you recommend that I, you know, blast
into space here.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
I mean, there's a few different things you can do,
and a lot of it would depend on how much
money you really have. If you're in the ten million
plus club, you know your private banker at Morgan Stanley
or RBS is going to know a guy who can
get you in. And you know, the perfect type of
share that you'd want to buy ideally is something that's direct,
it's vested, and it gets you on the shareholder registry.
(06:13):
You're not going to pay a fee for that twenty
third party to hold it, and you know you're going
to be in front of the queue just in case
anything does go wrong and you know there's a down
rating or anything else. But those things are very hard
to find.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Like basically, it's like very early investors or maybe former employees, right,
those are the exact chance.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
Yes, very much so. I mean the company is getting
on for over twenty years old now, so there are
those type of shares floating around. But SpaceX, as it's
gotten bigger and more successful and has frankly raised a
lot more money, has started to make it much more
difficult for even those type of people to sell their
shares accept people within the company or to you know,
for elon eself for example, they just don't want the
(06:52):
hassle of having to update their shareholder registry and have
it treated like a publicly traded stock when it's not.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Okay, So if I can't find any former employees or
early investors and I don't have a wealth manager, where
do I go from here?
Speaker 5 (07:09):
I mean, there's a couple of platforms that you can use.
So there's Hive and rain Maker Securities that you can
log into these apps. You can give them your information,
prove you're an incredited investor. Once you've dotted the ice
and cross the t's, you can look on the platform
and you can bid on shares. Some of them will
be those that we've discussed that were you know, former
employees or any investors, but much more common of what
(07:30):
they dubbed indirect shares, which are shares which are held
in special purpose vehicles that larger institutions have brought into
SpaceX and then they have individual backers behind those, so
SpaceX can't really see when those shares are trading hands.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Okay, So I've got money to burn, what do I do, Kyle?
I want to invest in SpaceX. What do I do?
Speaker 5 (07:52):
See, you don't quite have the money, you're not accredited.
You can there's public trading funds you can look at.
Baron Funds has six vehicles that have exposure to SpaceX.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
So even though it's a private company, these mutual funds
have exposure.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
Yes, and they've worked out ways that they can manage
v NAV risk without getting to technical and because they
form a relatively small part of the company's overall capital structure,
it's okay, particularly when the numbers are going up. So
for a Baron front you and you need two thousand
dollars or even less if you're going to make a
regular monthly contribution, and that will give you exposure to
the company. Fidelity is another example through many of their
(08:28):
mutual funds have at least a minor exposure to SpaceX.
But it's not quite the same as saying you own
a piece of the company.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Okay, and what if I don't have that much money,
what do I do? What do I do?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Then?
Speaker 5 (08:38):
If you want to just play with space there's other
things you can do. There's publicly traded companies that are
literally space companies. You can go and look at like
biasat there's suppliers to companies like SpaceX that have gone
up massively in the past year or so, in some
cases more than doubling in price. You can go to Gramport.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
So basically I have to resign myself to not owning
SpaceX and take the sector and companies in this sector
and hopefully get some exposure to space in the space economy.
Speaker 7 (09:06):
That way, Joel, I have another option for you. You
can go to the SpaceX merch store and buy SpaceX.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Okay elon known for some merch I'll have to check
that one out. So there's SpaceX, which is rockets, and
then there's Starlink, which is satellite internet. Right, there has
been some speculation that Starlink could IPO independently of SpaceX.
What would that mean if you happen to own SpaceX shares.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
That's a really good question. What typically happens in a
spinoff situation, assuming you've got growth and a lot of
investor support in the company, is there will be a
valuation placed on the spinout business and you will be
given the option to spread your shares, convert your shares,
or take either greater amount of percentage holding in SpaceX
(09:54):
as a resort of foregoing an option to be in starlink.
If the business isn't going, or one of them is
and going quite as well as they'd hoped, there may
be a cash plus share option put into that, or
if it's going straight for a float, there'll be a
value percentage put on both those businesses, and then you
will be recompensed at the eventual initial public offering. And
depending on what type of SpaceX share you have, maybe
(10:17):
it's preferred, maybe it's a regular, and we don't know
how many there are. Either of those, you'll be at
the front of the queue and your share will be
worth slightly more or slightly less compared to the next
guy in the road.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
And do we think it's likely that that starlink could
IPO separately and before SpaceX what do you think, Lauren?
Speaker 7 (10:33):
Yes, if there's any IPO happening when it comes to SpaceX,
it they've been very clear it would be a spin
off starlink venture. I don't think Elon wants to take
the entirety of SpaceX public. You have to remember also
that there's a bit of you know, Elon ideology wrapped
into this, right. SpaceX is goal the entire goal of
(10:54):
the company is to eventually get to Mars, and so
I think for him kind of keeping that really close
to the chest is very important. But yes, it would
I think it would definitely be Starlink. You know, as
Kyle and I have reported, they're preparing for an IPO
and having different servers, you know, different tools and hardware
that they use separate from the rest of the company
(11:15):
to work on Starlink initiatives. But when it comes to
that timeline, you know, they've even said publicly that until
their profits are consistent and it is a consistent business,
they're not going to take it public, and so you know,
who knows when that will happen. They keep telling us,
you know, that this that they're going to be making
more money and be cash flow positive, but as we've seen,
(11:38):
you know, that's just taking a little while to come
to fruition.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
All right, Lauren Kyle, thank you both so much for
joining us on elon Thank you, thank you, and now
we're joined by Ashley Vance and Sarah McBride. Welcome back
to elon Ink.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Both of you, thank you. Thanks.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Actually, you really cover a story about Neuralink for Bloomberg
Business Week last November, before human trials began. Now you're
back with a sequel, an exclusive with the first patient
who is paralyzed in a fluke accident a few years
ago before we hear about his story. Can you remind
us what is Neuralink trying to do?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, well, the basic idea, there's sort of a sci
fi idea that Elon has in mind. And then what's
happening now. What's happening now is the company makes a
brain implant that does require somebody to have surgery, have
their skull cut into and this implant is put in
the patient's head. It has these threads, these kind of
(12:39):
wires that dangle down from the implant and go into
the brain, and these read the signals that your brain
produces as your neurons fire. Software translates those signals then
into two actions, intentions that can be conveyed to a computer.
So you know, at the moment, this is being used
for people who are in pretty dire medical state. The
(13:02):
person we're going to talk about is paralyzed and he
can think what he wants to do on a computer
and all of those neurons firing, and software translate that
into actions on a computer. A cursor moves around on
the computer and does what he intended.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And so this is the first use of Neuralink in
the future.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Obviously, Elon's talked about he wants the general public to
have these implants to create some sort of meld between
humans and machines.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Before Elon and Neuralink can do any of that, they
need to wade through some human trials. Patient number one
is a young man named Nolan Arba. What was his
life like before the accident that left him paralyze and
what's it been like since.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yes, Nolan is he's a thirty year old guy. He
lives in Yuma, Arizona.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
He was paralyzed when he was twenty two in just
a really tragic diving accident, just total horrible luck. He
was playing with some friends in a lake, dove into
the water. He's still not actually sure exactly what happened,
but he got hit in the side of his head.
It dislocated his spine and he's paralyzed from the neck down.
So for the last eight years he's had to come
(14:12):
to terms with life as someone who's paralyzed. He's got
a wheelchair that's robotic that helps him get around most
of the time. If he wants to use a computer,
he has to put a stick in his mouth and
tap away on an iPad at the icons, and you know,
it's very limited what he can do. The last eight
years have been really frustrating for him. You know, he
(14:34):
was a healthy, athletic guy. All of that was taken away.
This has been expensive for the family. They're not who's
caring for him too, right, right, they care for him,
They're not that well off, and so he's kind of
felt like a burden and he's you know, he hasn't
been able to chase all these goals and dreams that
he had before the accident.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Sarah, why Nolan? How did he get picked?
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Well, this was a clinical trial. It's still ongoing, and
anytime a compan that's making a device as a clinical trial,
they kind of put out a call.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
They usually have.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
A very specific set of criteria. It sounds like they
were actively looking for people who were paralyzed, people under
a certain age, and out of what they say was
just a boatload of applicants, thousands of applicants, they picked Nolan.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, you know, it was September of last year. Neuralink
kind of put out this call for applicants. Nolan applied
on the very first day. His friend had seen this
call and encouraged Nolan to get into it. By you know,
the next day, Neuralink was already ringing him doing interviews
over the phone. By October he was at a hospital
(15:46):
having some other medical tests, and then by January he
was getting this implant.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
We actually have some clips that you brought back from
your interview with Nolan. Norlink, like all of Elon Musk's companies,
is synonymous with its owner. Here's what Nolan thought aboutout
Elon before this experience. It's also worth mentioning that no
One and his family have a number of farm animals,
including a very loud rooster that you're about to hear from.
Speaker 6 (16:09):
Because a lot of people look at him like, oh,
he's willing to do whatever to admit progress, And I
look at him like he actually does and everything he
does is for like better in humanity, and I think
that's something people don't give him enough credit for. And
so when I see him like caring so much about
like humanity, like in our progress, and then also just
(16:30):
these few people that he set up in a rocket
like it made me feel like he would not do
this if he felt like it was.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Going down badly death. Actually, can I ask about the
menagerie of farm animals? What was your favorite animal there?
I heard a Broos shirt a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
There's a lot going on, many birds. My favorite animals were,
for sure the Nigerian dwarf goats. They've got a lot
of playground equipment they could climb on and a tree
and they were really they were getting up there.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
But yeah, they got a lot going on in their backyard.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Okay, So I have to ask was being an Elon
super fan a prerequisite for having this implant?
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I don't think it was for neuralake.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
I think it probably helped get Nolan, you know, to
say yes to this procedure. We talked at length, you know,
a bunch of his friends tried to talk him out
of it. Obviously, there's been a lot of stories about
how Neuralinks done these animal trials on monkeys and pigs
and sheep for years. There's been a lot of stories
that some of those trials went badly and the animals
(17:30):
were harmed, and Nolan's friends were bringing these examples up
all the time. He is for sure an Elon fanboy,
he did, you know, kind of dig into some of this,
and then in the end he just decided it was
especially the SpaceX mission sending astronauts into space, that seemed
to have a big impact on him where Elon. He
saw an interview where Elon talked about having a sleepless
(17:52):
night before the first astronauts went up.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
And praying, you know, to God.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Elon's not a religious man, so that really stuck with
Nolan and he thought, Yah, Elon's is not going to
do this if it's going to actually hurt me.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
That was his conclusion.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Okay, Sarah, I want to talk about the surgery. How
does this go down?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
So what happens is, at first it looks like traditional
brain surgery. In this case, Noland went to the Barrel
Institute in Phoenix, which is known for neurosurgery, and a
surgeon could open his skull in a procedure called the craniotomy,
and then the device which looks like around core devise
(18:32):
with threads going off, which is where the electrodes are.
So the round part of the device gets implanted in
the skull and then the electrodes go down into the
brain tissue. A sewing machine does the part of the
surgery that implants the electrodes into the brain tissue. So
it starts off looking like traditional brain surgery, and then
(18:55):
it moves into this sewing machine where the surgeon most
involved is actually the technician operating the sewing machine that's
planning the electrodes into the brain tissue. So the difference
between the surgeries that have been done with electrodes and
neuralinks is neuralink has over a thousand electrodes. Some of
these other techniques, you know, at most like maybe two
(19:19):
three hundred is considered a lot. So neuralinks electrodes are
smaller and set right up against precisely targeted individual neurons,
and other companies target more broad groups of neurons. So
that's the difference with what they're doing. It's a lot
(19:39):
more ambitious.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Ashley, I want to talk to you about what it
was like for him going into this surgery and then
coming out on the other side. What did that feel
like for Noland?
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, Well, like Sarah said, you know, neuralinks surgery is
more invasive. The device is more powerful than ones we've
seen implanted like this before, and so there was the
huge expectation that or hope, you know, that you would
see much faster performance with this device. So when he
thinks it translates to actions on the computer more quickly
(20:10):
than other things that have been done before, that he
can do this in the comfort of his own home
instead of being in a hospital in laboratory setting, and
all that proved to be true. You know, he was
discharged from the hospital just a day after the surgery.
He spent sort of ten days near the hospital at
an airbnb under the with Neuralink people checking in on
(20:31):
and then he went home. And from the very first
day that he went home, he broke almost all of
the benchmark scores for these types of devices. So, you know,
it seemed to be outperforming anything that had happened before.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
What was an example of that, like what could he
do after the implant that he couldn't really do before.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Well, so they set these benchmark scores. You have to
think with your brain to move a cursor around on
a screen and sort of there's a grid with squares
on it, and like one will light up as a
yellow square and you have to move your cursor to
that square as quickly as you can. And so this
is these are these like medical aspects of calibrating how
fast this device is going. Outside of that, you know,
(21:13):
he was able to pretty much anything he wanted to do.
If he was using like a laptop, he would have
to do with voice recognition. And so he likes to play,
you know, audible. He likes to play audio books a lot,
but anytime he wanted to do anything else on his computer,
he'd have to stop the audiobook, issue another voice command
and hop around. Now he's got like an audiobook playing,
(21:34):
and while he's sitting there talking to you with the
audiobook playing, he just uses his mind to go start
playing chess. In a different application, he goes to play
video games. You know, he's able to, just like all
the rest of us, hop from tab to tab to
tab on our computer. And so you know, he couldn't
do that before. It is there's something like magical about it.
It took me, even though I knew what was happening,
(21:56):
it took me a second to sort of realize he
was talking to me and using his at the same time,
like he was playing chess while he was just having
a normal conversation with me. And you know, I think,
like even the rest of us who multitask, it struck
me as unusual.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
Okay, this is actually where the story gets even more interesting.
Let's play one more clip from Ashley's interview with no One.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
Basically, what happened was like control of the cursor started
deteriorating a lot, and then I thought they started doing
different things, like I thought they were experimenting, and I
started like losing control of the cursor a bit. So
I was frustrated. I thought it was then, But then
when I went up to visit Neuralink to do like
the tour and the all hands and stuff. The day
(22:40):
of the tour and everything of the all hands, they
came to my hotel in the morning and they told
me that threats were getting pulled out of my brain
and that's why I was using control. They don't know
like how serious it is really, They didn't know a
ton about it.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
And so, yeah, what did you think they told you that? Yeah,
I kind of a little bit.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
Yeah, it was really really hard to hear. I thought
that basically my whole journey with them was coming to
an end. I thought that I had gotten maybe a
month of use out of it, and that was going
to be it.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
If you feel for him here where if you've gone
from being in a place to having like a glimpse
of a new life and then it's you slowly start
to lose it. So talk to us more about what's
happening inside his brain that has resulted in this.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
It turns out that some of the electrodes that were
implanted didn't stay in place. I've since talked to neurosurgeons
who say that's actually not that uncommon with these brain
electrode surgeries, that it would be not out of the
(23:54):
ordinary for a few to jostle out of place. What
we don't know is if the electrode threads retracted all
together out of his brain tissue, or if they just
moved around a little bit, And if more are going
to go through the same process where they jostle out
(24:15):
of the spot where they're supposed to be, and what
the impact would be for Nolan.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yes, you know, when they put these threads in, I mean,
there's dozens of them, and so they're they're kind of
they're not all in the same spot.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
They're kind of scattered out through this portion of your brain.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
And what neuralink found was that a lot more of
them had moved and shifted than what it had seen
in these animal trials previously. And so one of the
big hopes with this device, like we mentioned, was that
it was going to have this incredible performance, So you're
going to have the thousand plus channels of information going
back and forth, and so obviously that got limited quite
(24:53):
a bit. And yeah, I felt for you know, this
is a guy who, look, he's paralyzed. He took this
huge risk to mess with his brain. The brain is
that's like the last thing he has that's kind of
some sense of normalcy in his life. He was excited
to be helping other people to be part of this trial,
and it was winding down pretty quick.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
All that happened within the first month.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And so not only is he kind of losing what
felt like a superpower, it's like unclear if Neuralink's going
to sort of move on past him to the next
patient now. And so it's a very fleeting amount of
time to really get to enjoy and be excited about
this huge risk that he'd taken.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
How much fine tuning was Neuralink able to do since they.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Were able over the weeks that kept going by working
with him and it's essentially machine learning software. Combined with
him doing the practice on their training software, they were
able to change the algorithms to sort of read the
data out in different ways, and so he has gotten
the performance back up to where the same kind of
(26:01):
record setting performance.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
He's happy.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
He uses it all day every day, you know, he
uses it about ten to twelve hours a day. He
kind of doesn't when he's sleeping, and then it does
have to be recharged every now and then, so but
otherwise it is now just like a regular part of
his life and he's quite happy again.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Sarah, what does this mean for the industry as a whole,
neuralink specifically, but also the rest of what brain implants
and those companies who are in that space can take
away from what we're learning about the brain here from Noland.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Well, the other companies are following this very closely. A
lot of them sees down the news that the electrodes
had moved and say that there might be a fundamental
flaw with neuralinks technology that perhaps it shouldn't be anchored
within the skull. But I think that's pretty much casting
(27:07):
aspersions at this moment. We just don't know what the
best technology is going to be I think a lot
of companies are looking at Neuralink, which, if it can
pull off having a thousand plus electrodes working, is going
to be far more advanced than any existing company. So
I think they're excited and scared at the same time
(27:29):
that the competition if it unfolds as Neuralink once it's
going to be, it could have dramatic implications for people
who are paralyzed, people with als, maybe even Parkinson's. It
raises the bar for everybody.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Just so people know, I mean, this is like a
really excited year for this technology. You know, so we've
this has been in academia for decades. A lot of
these experiments have kind of been done before in much
more limited settings. As Sarah mentioned, you know, there's different approaches.
So one company is trying to go through blood vessel
in the brain with a very minimally invasive surgery, but
(28:04):
it doesn't have much horsepower on its device. Another wants
to put these electrodes just like on the surface of
the brain. But this is like sort of the year
where we're going to see probably I don't know, anywhere
from like four to six different techniques in clinical trials
have a sense as to what works. I think it's
not like a black and white thing because people are
(28:27):
after different, different sort of end goals. It's like, can
you help someone live a bit more of a normal
life and do a few more things than they currently can. Okay,
maybe you don't need a super invasive device to do that.
Neuralink wants to get to this point, you know, where
it's doing the most dramatic advances, it's changing people's lives
(28:50):
the most dramatically. It wants to get where you can
link these brain implants with a spinal implant one day
and restore motion for people. And so there's this whole gamut.
But it's like an incredibly exciting time. We're going to
find out sort of a lot about these different approaches
this year.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
And what do we know about what Elon has had
to say about the device in its performance with Nolan
so far?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Well, I think he was he was at the surgery,
He's been in communication with Nolan.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
I think all along Elon was.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Hoping that this first patient would have an overall positive experience.
It takes some pressure off, I think with regulators and
as far as how the public is perceiving what Neuralink
is doing. The company has not had the best pr run,
to say the least over the last couple of years,
to have a human out there who's singing the praises
of this device.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Nolan's very likable.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
He's very down to earth, he's very honest about everything,
and so I think that's helpful. I know Elon, you know,
they're quickly trying to get to patient two and three,
and either they're going to just go forward with this device,
or you know, I've talked to some people. I think
they're going to try to make some engineering changes, either
to how they do the surgery or with the threads themselves.
(30:05):
And so so this poses a problem for the company.
I think probably overall Elon is like concerned about that
next step, but has to be happy with this first patient.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
I would think. Having said that, seeing Nolan use it, it
really does.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Sort of win you over in a lot of ways,
and you start to kind of like think, where you know,
the Elon's sci fi stuff about everybody getting get planned
with one of these. I think we're many many, many
many many years away from that if it happens. But
when I saw him using it while he's talking to me.
You start to realize, like God, like the rest of
us really could probably do stuff we can't do today.
(30:43):
You'd just be this like multitasking dynamo and I don't know.
This was the first time I felt that viscerally, and
it became all the more interesting.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
To me and Sarah. What's next for the company? What
are the next steps and what are you going to
be watching?
Speaker 3 (31:00):
So they as part of the trial Nolan's in, they
need to implant the device in a few more patients.
They will probably Ashley, do they have permission to go
into twelve patients as part of this as part of
this trial?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
I remember twelve was sort of the goal for this year,
so it must be something along those lines.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
So usually what a company gets is permission for a
few patients and then they can go into the next
phase of the trial, which in this case would be
the pivotal stage and it would be far more patients
and that would be the stage before you can move commercially.
So they probably have tiered permission where they just have
(31:44):
a blanket permission to go into a certain number of
patients as part of this phase of the trial, and
they can make small tweaks in between each patient to
see what works best, so it's a big exciting here
for them.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
Ashley Sarah, thanks so much for joining us on Elenning.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Rayhan Harmanci are our senior editors. The idea for this
very show also came from Ray Blake. Maples handles engineering,
and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Crocot. Our
supervising producer is Magnus hendrickson the Elon Inc. Theeen is
written and performed by Taka Yazazawa and Alex Sigihira. Brendan
(32:41):
Francis Newman is our executive producer, and Saide Bauman is
the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. I'm Joel Webber sitting in
for David Papa Dabolas. If you have a minute, please
rate and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us.
See you next week and
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Well, Elon Muski is now the richest person on the planet.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
More than half the satellites in space are owned and
controlled by one man.
Speaker 4 (00:22):
Well, he's a legitimate super genius. I mean legitimate.
Speaker 5 (00:25):
He says.
Speaker 6 (00:26):
He's always voted for Democrats, but this year it will
be different.
Speaker 5 (00:29):
He'll vote Republican.
Speaker 1 (00:30):
There is a reason the US government is so reliant
on him.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
Elon Musk is a scam artist and he's done nothing.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
Anything he does, he's fascinating to people. Welcome to Elon Inc.
Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's May twenty first,
and I'm your host, Joel Webber, covering for David Papadopolos.
(00:58):
Today we're going to talk about Tooth, Bloomberg BusinessWeek's exclusive
with the first Neuralink patient, Noland Arba. He has a
pretty remarkable story becoming a human cyborg, but already things
aren't going quite as planned. In a bit, we'll hear
from Ashley Vance, who interviewed Noland, and Sarah McBride, who
covers the startup for Bloomberg Technology. But first, how do
(01:19):
you buy SpaceX investing in a private company let alone
the most highly valued unicorn in America is among the
most difficult missions around, and we have a guide for
the galaxy's most determined investors. Joining us for that crazy
mission is Lauren Grush, who covers space for Bloomberg News.
Hello Lauren, thank you. And Kyle Porter, who wrote about
(01:40):
investing in SpaceX and the new issue of Bloomberg Markets Magazine.
Hello Kyle, thanks for having us. Joe, Kyle, I'll start
with you. Elon Musk's startup is privately held and has
a valuation of about one hundred and eighty billion dollars.
It's obviously hard to buy shares, but is it impossible?
Speaker 5 (01:58):
No, it's not totally impossible, and they don't advertise for
you how to do it. But if you read our
helpful explainer or have you know a very expensive wealth manager,
you can get in.
Speaker 4 (02:09):
Okay, how much money do I need?
Speaker 5 (02:13):
Well, there might be a couple of exceptions if you're
doing it friends to friends, but for the most part,
you're going to need to be an accredited investor, and
that's somebody who for the last two years has earned
income of north of two hundred thousand dollars. Or if
you're a married couple three hundred thousand dollars, or you
have a networth above a million dollars which does not
include your primary home.
Speaker 4 (02:33):
Okay, so have I got fifty bucks in a Robinhood account?
This is not for me.
Speaker 5 (02:37):
No, it's not going to happen for you. What's interesting
is that, you know, accredited investors have become an increasingly
large part.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
Of the market.
Speaker 5 (02:43):
The actual accreditation was developed in the nineteen eighties when
it affected about one percent of the population. Now about
twenty million households can be classes of credited investors just
through inflationary drag.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
Lauren, why would anyone want to own a privately held
startup And there's a word for startups like this who
have massive valuations and are still private, which is unicorn.
This is not a typical retail space. But why would
any investor want to have some exposure?
Speaker 7 (03:15):
I would say for two reasons. One, when it comes
to SpaceX specifically, I think there's a lot of excitement
around starlink. So the idea that you know, maybe eventually
this will become a multi billion dollar business and that
will pay out, and that will be kind of more
of a typical consumer business that would have a return
(03:35):
for investors. And then I think also the second reason
is just the cult of Elon, you know, having some
kind of stake in one of his companies I think
has an amendous, tremendous draw for a lot of people.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
What are the risks though, because you know, private market
means there's no liquidity that a normal you know, publicly
traded company would really have. Right, so so what does
what does that look like? What are the risks for investors?
Speaker 7 (04:01):
Well, I think the risks are it's still not very
proven that launching rockets and being in the space business
is actually a profitably sustainable enterprise.
Speaker 4 (04:13):
Right.
Speaker 7 (04:14):
All we have is a lot of what Elon tells us.
I mean, we don't have a really hard look into
SpaceX's financials. They tell us they are profitable, they tell
us they have money in the bank, but they are
also dumping a ton of money into research and development
and also to create you know, massive rockets like Starship.
They're still putting a tremendous amount of money into Starlink.
(04:36):
And when we when we have seen space companies go public,
we haven't seen a lot of great you know profitability there.
It's it's a very tough business to make work. You
have to put in a ton of upfront capital, you
spend years creating you know, these systems, and then there's
really no guarantee that you're going to get enough customers
(04:57):
that makes it work long term. So I think that
that is the risk. And when it comes to SpaceX,
you know, they seem to have broken the mold and
has shown that they can do it. But it remains
to be seen if that can be replicated or if
SpaceX is as profitable as they say they are.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Kyle, what do we know about the demand for something
like SpaceX shares?
Speaker 5 (05:17):
Oh, it's huge primary tender office were ever subscribed? There
are people queuing around the block to get into this company,
which is good news because they have burned an awful
lot of cash at the moment getting these rockets into
the air. It's part of the reason, in my humble opinion,
why they're not public yet. They don't have to disclose
that much information and they're still getting the money. I mean,
what company wouldn't won that situation.
Speaker 4 (05:39):
Okay, say I've got six figures and I want to play.
What are my options? What kind of shares are available even?
And how would you recommend that I, you know, blast
into space here.
Speaker 5 (05:52):
I mean, there's a few different things you can do,
and a lot of it would depend on how much
money you really have. If you're in the ten million
plus club, you know your private banker at Morgan Stanley
or RBS is going to know a guy who can
get you in. And you know, the perfect type of
share that you'd want to buy ideally is something that's direct,
it's vested, and it gets you on the shareholder registry.
(06:13):
You're not going to pay a fee for that twenty
third party to hold it, and you know you're going
to be in front of the queue just in case
anything does go wrong and you know there's a down
rating or anything else. But those things are very hard
to find.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Like basically, it's like very early investors or maybe former employees, right,
those are the exact chance.
Speaker 5 (06:32):
Yes, very much so. I mean the company is getting
on for over twenty years old now, so there are
those type of shares floating around. But SpaceX, as it's
gotten bigger and more successful and has frankly raised a
lot more money, has started to make it much more
difficult for even those type of people to sell their
shares accept people within the company or to you know,
for elon eself for example, they just don't want the
(06:52):
hassle of having to update their shareholder registry and have
it treated like a publicly traded stock when it's not.
Speaker 4 (06:59):
Okay, So if I can't find any former employees or
early investors and I don't have a wealth manager, where
do I go from here?
Speaker 5 (07:09):
I mean, there's a couple of platforms that you can use.
So there's Hive and rain Maker Securities that you can
log into these apps. You can give them your information,
prove you're an incredited investor. Once you've dotted the ice
and cross the t's, you can look on the platform
and you can bid on shares. Some of them will
be those that we've discussed that were you know, former
employees or any investors, but much more common of what
(07:30):
they dubbed indirect shares, which are shares which are held
in special purpose vehicles that larger institutions have brought into
SpaceX and then they have individual backers behind those, so
SpaceX can't really see when those shares are trading hands.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Okay, So I've got money to burn, what do I do, Kyle?
I want to invest in SpaceX. What do I do?
Speaker 5 (07:52):
See, you don't quite have the money, you're not accredited.
You can there's public trading funds you can look at.
Baron Funds has six vehicles that have exposure to SpaceX.
Speaker 4 (08:02):
So even though it's a private company, these mutual funds
have exposure.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
Yes, and they've worked out ways that they can manage
v NAV risk without getting to technical and because they
form a relatively small part of the company's overall capital structure,
it's okay, particularly when the numbers are going up. So
for a Baron front you and you need two thousand
dollars or even less if you're going to make a
regular monthly contribution, and that will give you exposure to
the company. Fidelity is another example through many of their
(08:28):
mutual funds have at least a minor exposure to SpaceX.
But it's not quite the same as saying you own
a piece of the company.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Okay, and what if I don't have that much money,
what do I do? What do I do?
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Then?
Speaker 5 (08:38):
If you want to just play with space there's other
things you can do. There's publicly traded companies that are
literally space companies. You can go and look at like
biasat there's suppliers to companies like SpaceX that have gone
up massively in the past year or so, in some
cases more than doubling in price. You can go to Gramport.
Speaker 4 (08:55):
So basically I have to resign myself to not owning
SpaceX and take the sector and companies in this sector
and hopefully get some exposure to space in the space economy.
Speaker 7 (09:06):
That way, Joel, I have another option for you. You
can go to the SpaceX merch store and buy SpaceX.
Speaker 4 (09:12):
Okay elon known for some merch I'll have to check
that one out. So there's SpaceX, which is rockets, and
then there's Starlink, which is satellite internet. Right, there has
been some speculation that Starlink could IPO independently of SpaceX.
What would that mean if you happen to own SpaceX shares.
Speaker 5 (09:32):
That's a really good question. What typically happens in a
spinoff situation, assuming you've got growth and a lot of
investor support in the company, is there will be a
valuation placed on the spinout business and you will be
given the option to spread your shares, convert your shares,
or take either greater amount of percentage holding in SpaceX
(09:54):
as a resort of foregoing an option to be in starlink.
If the business isn't going, or one of them is
and going quite as well as they'd hoped, there may
be a cash plus share option put into that, or
if it's going straight for a float, there'll be a
value percentage put on both those businesses, and then you
will be recompensed at the eventual initial public offering. And
depending on what type of SpaceX share you have, maybe
(10:17):
it's preferred, maybe it's a regular, and we don't know
how many there are. Either of those, you'll be at
the front of the queue and your share will be
worth slightly more or slightly less compared to the next
guy in the road.
Speaker 4 (10:27):
And do we think it's likely that that starlink could
IPO separately and before SpaceX what do you think, Lauren?
Speaker 7 (10:33):
Yes, if there's any IPO happening when it comes to SpaceX,
it they've been very clear it would be a spin
off starlink venture. I don't think Elon wants to take
the entirety of SpaceX public. You have to remember also
that there's a bit of you know, Elon ideology wrapped
into this, right. SpaceX is goal the entire goal of
(10:54):
the company is to eventually get to Mars, and so
I think for him kind of keeping that really close
to the chest is very important. But yes, it would
I think it would definitely be Starlink. You know, as
Kyle and I have reported, they're preparing for an IPO
and having different servers, you know, different tools and hardware
that they use separate from the rest of the company
(11:15):
to work on Starlink initiatives. But when it comes to
that timeline, you know, they've even said publicly that until
their profits are consistent and it is a consistent business,
they're not going to take it public, and so you know,
who knows when that will happen. They keep telling us,
you know, that this that they're going to be making
more money and be cash flow positive, but as we've seen,
(11:38):
you know, that's just taking a little while to come
to fruition.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
All right, Lauren Kyle, thank you both so much for
joining us on elon Thank you, thank you, and now
we're joined by Ashley Vance and Sarah McBride. Welcome back
to elon Ink.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Both of you, thank you. Thanks.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Actually, you really cover a story about Neuralink for Bloomberg
Business Week last November, before human trials began. Now you're
back with a sequel, an exclusive with the first patient
who is paralyzed in a fluke accident a few years
ago before we hear about his story. Can you remind
us what is Neuralink trying to do?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, well, the basic idea, there's sort of a sci
fi idea that Elon has in mind. And then what's
happening now. What's happening now is the company makes a
brain implant that does require somebody to have surgery, have
their skull cut into and this implant is put in
the patient's head. It has these threads, these kind of
(12:39):
wires that dangle down from the implant and go into
the brain, and these read the signals that your brain
produces as your neurons fire. Software translates those signals then
into two actions, intentions that can be conveyed to a computer.
So you know, at the moment, this is being used
for people who are in pretty dire medical state. The
(13:02):
person we're going to talk about is paralyzed and he
can think what he wants to do on a computer
and all of those neurons firing, and software translate that
into actions on a computer. A cursor moves around on
the computer and does what he intended.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
And so this is the first use of Neuralink in
the future.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Obviously, Elon's talked about he wants the general public to
have these implants to create some sort of meld between
humans and machines.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Before Elon and Neuralink can do any of that, they
need to wade through some human trials. Patient number one
is a young man named Nolan Arba. What was his
life like before the accident that left him paralyze and
what's it been like since.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
Yes, Nolan is he's a thirty year old guy. He
lives in Yuma, Arizona.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
He was paralyzed when he was twenty two in just
a really tragic diving accident, just total horrible luck. He
was playing with some friends in a lake, dove into
the water. He's still not actually sure exactly what happened,
but he got hit in the side of his head.
It dislocated his spine and he's paralyzed from the neck down.
So for the last eight years he's had to come
(14:12):
to terms with life as someone who's paralyzed. He's got
a wheelchair that's robotic that helps him get around most
of the time. If he wants to use a computer,
he has to put a stick in his mouth and
tap away on an iPad at the icons, and you know,
it's very limited what he can do. The last eight
years have been really frustrating for him. You know, he
(14:34):
was a healthy, athletic guy. All of that was taken away.
This has been expensive for the family. They're not who's
caring for him too, right, right, they care for him,
They're not that well off, and so he's kind of
felt like a burden and he's you know, he hasn't
been able to chase all these goals and dreams that
he had before the accident.
Speaker 4 (14:53):
Sarah, why Nolan? How did he get picked?
Speaker 3 (14:55):
Well, this was a clinical trial. It's still ongoing, and
anytime a compan that's making a device as a clinical trial,
they kind of put out a call.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
They usually have.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
A very specific set of criteria. It sounds like they
were actively looking for people who were paralyzed, people under
a certain age, and out of what they say was
just a boatload of applicants, thousands of applicants, they picked Nolan.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
Yeah, you know, it was September of last year. Neuralink
kind of put out this call for applicants. Nolan applied
on the very first day. His friend had seen this
call and encouraged Nolan to get into it. By you know,
the next day, Neuralink was already ringing him doing interviews
over the phone. By October he was at a hospital
(15:46):
having some other medical tests, and then by January he
was getting this implant.
Speaker 4 (15:51):
We actually have some clips that you brought back from
your interview with Nolan. Norlink, like all of Elon Musk's companies,
is synonymous with its owner. Here's what Nolan thought aboutout
Elon before this experience. It's also worth mentioning that no
One and his family have a number of farm animals,
including a very loud rooster that you're about to hear from.
Speaker 6 (16:09):
Because a lot of people look at him like, oh,
he's willing to do whatever to admit progress, And I
look at him like he actually does and everything he
does is for like better in humanity, and I think
that's something people don't give him enough credit for. And
so when I see him like caring so much about
like humanity, like in our progress, and then also just
(16:30):
these few people that he set up in a rocket
like it made me feel like he would not do
this if he felt like it was.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Going down badly death. Actually, can I ask about the
menagerie of farm animals? What was your favorite animal there?
I heard a Broos shirt a couple of times.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
There's a lot going on, many birds. My favorite animals were,
for sure the Nigerian dwarf goats. They've got a lot
of playground equipment they could climb on and a tree
and they were really they were getting up there.
Speaker 1 (16:57):
But yeah, they got a lot going on in their backyard.
Speaker 4 (16:59):
Okay, So I have to ask was being an Elon
super fan a prerequisite for having this implant?
Speaker 1 (17:06):
I don't think it was for neuralake.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
I think it probably helped get Nolan, you know, to
say yes to this procedure. We talked at length, you know,
a bunch of his friends tried to talk him out
of it. Obviously, there's been a lot of stories about
how Neuralinks done these animal trials on monkeys and pigs
and sheep for years. There's been a lot of stories
that some of those trials went badly and the animals
(17:30):
were harmed, and Nolan's friends were bringing these examples up
all the time. He is for sure an Elon fanboy,
he did, you know, kind of dig into some of this,
and then in the end he just decided it was
especially the SpaceX mission sending astronauts into space, that seemed
to have a big impact on him where Elon. He
saw an interview where Elon talked about having a sleepless
(17:52):
night before the first astronauts went up.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
And praying, you know, to God.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Elon's not a religious man, so that really stuck with
Nolan and he thought, Yah, Elon's is not going to
do this if it's going to actually hurt me.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
That was his conclusion.
Speaker 4 (18:05):
Okay, Sarah, I want to talk about the surgery. How
does this go down?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
So what happens is, at first it looks like traditional
brain surgery. In this case, Noland went to the Barrel
Institute in Phoenix, which is known for neurosurgery, and a
surgeon could open his skull in a procedure called the craniotomy,
and then the device which looks like around core devise
(18:32):
with threads going off, which is where the electrodes are.
So the round part of the device gets implanted in
the skull and then the electrodes go down into the
brain tissue. A sewing machine does the part of the
surgery that implants the electrodes into the brain tissue. So
it starts off looking like traditional brain surgery, and then
(18:55):
it moves into this sewing machine where the surgeon most
involved is actually the technician operating the sewing machine that's
planning the electrodes into the brain tissue. So the difference
between the surgeries that have been done with electrodes and
neuralinks is neuralink has over a thousand electrodes. Some of
these other techniques, you know, at most like maybe two
(19:19):
three hundred is considered a lot. So neuralinks electrodes are
smaller and set right up against precisely targeted individual neurons,
and other companies target more broad groups of neurons. So
that's the difference with what they're doing. It's a lot
(19:39):
more ambitious.
Speaker 4 (19:40):
Ashley, I want to talk to you about what it
was like for him going into this surgery and then
coming out on the other side. What did that feel
like for Noland?
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Yeah, Well, like Sarah said, you know, neuralinks surgery is
more invasive. The device is more powerful than ones we've
seen implanted like this before, and so there was the
huge expectation that or hope, you know, that you would
see much faster performance with this device. So when he
thinks it translates to actions on the computer more quickly
(20:10):
than other things that have been done before, that he
can do this in the comfort of his own home
instead of being in a hospital in laboratory setting, and
all that proved to be true. You know, he was
discharged from the hospital just a day after the surgery.
He spent sort of ten days near the hospital at
an airbnb under the with Neuralink people checking in on
(20:31):
and then he went home. And from the very first
day that he went home, he broke almost all of
the benchmark scores for these types of devices. So, you know,
it seemed to be outperforming anything that had happened before.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
What was an example of that, like what could he
do after the implant that he couldn't really do before.
Speaker 2 (20:51):
Well, so they set these benchmark scores. You have to
think with your brain to move a cursor around on
a screen and sort of there's a grid with squares
on it, and like one will light up as a
yellow square and you have to move your cursor to
that square as quickly as you can. And so this
is these are these like medical aspects of calibrating how
fast this device is going. Outside of that, you know,
(21:13):
he was able to pretty much anything he wanted to do.
If he was using like a laptop, he would have
to do with voice recognition. And so he likes to play,
you know, audible. He likes to play audio books a lot,
but anytime he wanted to do anything else on his computer,
he'd have to stop the audiobook, issue another voice command
and hop around. Now he's got like an audiobook playing,
(21:34):
and while he's sitting there talking to you with the
audiobook playing, he just uses his mind to go start
playing chess. In a different application, he goes to play
video games. You know, he's able to, just like all
the rest of us, hop from tab to tab to
tab on our computer. And so you know, he couldn't
do that before. It is there's something like magical about it.
It took me, even though I knew what was happening,
(21:56):
it took me a second to sort of realize he
was talking to me and using his at the same time,
like he was playing chess while he was just having
a normal conversation with me. And you know, I think,
like even the rest of us who multitask, it struck
me as unusual.
Speaker 4 (22:11):
Okay, this is actually where the story gets even more interesting.
Let's play one more clip from Ashley's interview with no One.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
Basically, what happened was like control of the cursor started
deteriorating a lot, and then I thought they started doing
different things, like I thought they were experimenting, and I
started like losing control of the cursor a bit. So
I was frustrated. I thought it was then, But then
when I went up to visit Neuralink to do like
the tour and the all hands and stuff. The day
(22:40):
of the tour and everything of the all hands, they
came to my hotel in the morning and they told
me that threats were getting pulled out of my brain
and that's why I was using control. They don't know
like how serious it is really, They didn't know a
ton about it.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
And so, yeah, what did you think they told you that? Yeah,
I kind of a little bit.
Speaker 6 (23:00):
Yeah, it was really really hard to hear. I thought
that basically my whole journey with them was coming to
an end. I thought that I had gotten maybe a
month of use out of it, and that was going
to be it.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
If you feel for him here where if you've gone
from being in a place to having like a glimpse
of a new life and then it's you slowly start
to lose it. So talk to us more about what's
happening inside his brain that has resulted in this.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
It turns out that some of the electrodes that were
implanted didn't stay in place. I've since talked to neurosurgeons
who say that's actually not that uncommon with these brain
electrode surgeries, that it would be not out of the
(23:54):
ordinary for a few to jostle out of place. What
we don't know is if the electrode threads retracted all
together out of his brain tissue, or if they just
moved around a little bit, And if more are going
to go through the same process where they jostle out
(24:15):
of the spot where they're supposed to be, and what
the impact would be for Nolan.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yes, you know, when they put these threads in, I mean,
there's dozens of them, and so they're they're kind of
they're not all in the same spot.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
They're kind of scattered out through this portion of your brain.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
And what neuralink found was that a lot more of
them had moved and shifted than what it had seen
in these animal trials previously. And so one of the
big hopes with this device, like we mentioned, was that
it was going to have this incredible performance, So you're
going to have the thousand plus channels of information going
back and forth, and so obviously that got limited quite
(24:53):
a bit. And yeah, I felt for you know, this
is a guy who, look, he's paralyzed. He took this
huge risk to mess with his brain. The brain is
that's like the last thing he has that's kind of
some sense of normalcy in his life. He was excited
to be helping other people to be part of this trial,
and it was winding down pretty quick.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
You know.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
All that happened within the first month.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
And so not only is he kind of losing what
felt like a superpower, it's like unclear if Neuralink's going
to sort of move on past him to the next
patient now. And so it's a very fleeting amount of
time to really get to enjoy and be excited about
this huge risk that he'd taken.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
How much fine tuning was Neuralink able to do since they.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Were able over the weeks that kept going by working
with him and it's essentially machine learning software. Combined with
him doing the practice on their training software, they were
able to change the algorithms to sort of read the
data out in different ways, and so he has gotten
the performance back up to where the same kind of
(26:01):
record setting performance.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
He's happy.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
He uses it all day every day, you know, he
uses it about ten to twelve hours a day. He
kind of doesn't when he's sleeping, and then it does
have to be recharged every now and then, so but
otherwise it is now just like a regular part of
his life and he's quite happy again.
Speaker 4 (26:25):
Sarah, what does this mean for the industry as a whole,
neuralink specifically, but also the rest of what brain implants
and those companies who are in that space can take
away from what we're learning about the brain here from Noland.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Well, the other companies are following this very closely. A
lot of them sees down the news that the electrodes
had moved and say that there might be a fundamental
flaw with neuralinks technology that perhaps it shouldn't be anchored
within the skull. But I think that's pretty much casting
(27:07):
aspersions at this moment. We just don't know what the
best technology is going to be I think a lot
of companies are looking at Neuralink, which, if it can
pull off having a thousand plus electrodes working, is going
to be far more advanced than any existing company. So
I think they're excited and scared at the same time
(27:29):
that the competition if it unfolds as Neuralink once it's
going to be, it could have dramatic implications for people
who are paralyzed, people with als, maybe even Parkinson's. It
raises the bar for everybody.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
Just so people know, I mean, this is like a
really excited year for this technology. You know, so we've
this has been in academia for decades. A lot of
these experiments have kind of been done before in much
more limited settings. As Sarah mentioned, you know, there's different approaches.
So one company is trying to go through blood vessel
in the brain with a very minimally invasive surgery, but
(28:04):
it doesn't have much horsepower on its device. Another wants
to put these electrodes just like on the surface of
the brain. But this is like sort of the year
where we're going to see probably I don't know, anywhere
from like four to six different techniques in clinical trials
have a sense as to what works. I think it's
not like a black and white thing because people are
(28:27):
after different, different sort of end goals. It's like, can
you help someone live a bit more of a normal
life and do a few more things than they currently can. Okay,
maybe you don't need a super invasive device to do that.
Neuralink wants to get to this point, you know, where
it's doing the most dramatic advances, it's changing people's lives
(28:50):
the most dramatically. It wants to get where you can
link these brain implants with a spinal implant one day
and restore motion for people. And so there's this whole gamut.
But it's like an incredibly exciting time. We're going to
find out sort of a lot about these different approaches
this year.
Speaker 4 (29:05):
And what do we know about what Elon has had
to say about the device in its performance with Nolan
so far?
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Well, I think he was he was at the surgery,
He's been in communication with Nolan.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
I think all along Elon was.
Speaker 2 (29:20):
Hoping that this first patient would have an overall positive experience.
It takes some pressure off, I think with regulators and
as far as how the public is perceiving what Neuralink
is doing. The company has not had the best pr run,
to say the least over the last couple of years,
to have a human out there who's singing the praises
of this device.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Nolan's very likable.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
He's very down to earth, he's very honest about everything,
and so I think that's helpful. I know Elon, you know,
they're quickly trying to get to patient two and three,
and either they're going to just go forward with this device,
or you know, I've talked to some people. I think
they're going to try to make some engineering changes, either
to how they do the surgery or with the threads themselves.
(30:05):
And so so this poses a problem for the company.
I think probably overall Elon is like concerned about that
next step, but has to be happy with this first patient.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
I would think. Having said that, seeing Nolan use it, it
really does.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Sort of win you over in a lot of ways,
and you start to kind of like think, where you know,
the Elon's sci fi stuff about everybody getting get planned
with one of these. I think we're many many, many
many many years away from that if it happens. But
when I saw him using it while he's talking to me.
You start to realize, like God, like the rest of
us really could probably do stuff we can't do today.
(30:43):
You'd just be this like multitasking dynamo and I don't know.
This was the first time I felt that viscerally, and
it became all the more interesting.
Speaker 4 (30:52):
To me and Sarah. What's next for the company? What
are the next steps and what are you going to
be watching?
Speaker 3 (31:00):
So they as part of the trial Nolan's in, they
need to implant the device in a few more patients.
They will probably Ashley, do they have permission to go
into twelve patients as part of this as part of
this trial?
Speaker 2 (31:15):
I remember twelve was sort of the goal for this year,
so it must be something along those lines.
Speaker 3 (31:20):
So usually what a company gets is permission for a
few patients and then they can go into the next
phase of the trial, which in this case would be
the pivotal stage and it would be far more patients
and that would be the stage before you can move commercially.
So they probably have tiered permission where they just have
(31:44):
a blanket permission to go into a certain number of
patients as part of this phase of the trial, and
they can make small tweaks in between each patient to
see what works best, so it's a big exciting here
for them.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
Ashley Sarah, thanks so much for joining us on Elenning.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
Thank you, Thank you.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
This episode was produced by Stacey Wong. Naomi Shaven and
Rayhan Harmanci are our senior editors. The idea for this
very show also came from Ray Blake. Maples handles engineering,
and we get special editing assistants from Jeff Crocot. Our
supervising producer is Magnus hendrickson the Elon Inc. Theeen is
written and performed by Taka Yazazawa and Alex Sigihira. Brendan
(32:41):
Francis Newman is our executive producer, and Saide Bauman is
the head of Bloomberg Podcasts. I'm Joel Webber sitting in
for David Papa Dabolas. If you have a minute, please
rate and review our show. It'll help other listeners find us.
See you next week and
Host
David Papadopoulos
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