Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

With the progress of the experiment pushed again and again, Neuralink is no longer a "dust-free" existence in the industry. When I raised my eyes, I had already been surrounded by heroes.

Neuralink, the brain-computer interface company that Musk "endorses", has another news: human trials will begin within six months.

Neuralink is working on a device that converts brain signals into action, which will first be used to restore human vision, and to help people who can't move their muscles control devices such as smartphones, or even restore the whole body function of people with spinal cord injuries.

So far, Neuralink has submitted most of the documents to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to seek approval for clinical trials.

This is not the first time Musk has made public his progress. In a public speech in 2019, Mr Musk said Neuralink's goal was to obtain regulatory approval by the end of 2020.

Unfortunately, it did not succeed. Then, speaking at the Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Forum on December 7, 2021, Musk said he hoped to implant the first Neuralink implant into the human body by 2022.

Judging from Musk's speech today, there is no doubt that this progress has been delayed again.

In contrast, Synchron, a brain-computer interface startup founded in 2017, not only beat NeuraLink to FDA approval to conduct human trials, but also implanted its device into the first human patient in Melbourne, Australia in 2019.

At the same time, in China, the news of brain-computer interface continues to appear during this period of time: MetaBCI, China's first comprehensive open source software platform for brain-computer interface, has been officially released; Huawei and Tianjin University have released a new patent called "human-computer interaction method, human-computer interaction device and storage medium".

Peng Lei, founder and CEO of Naohu Technology, has publicly said that 2021 can be seen as a "turning point" in the industry. "this inflection point in the industry means that brain-computer interface technology has entered an accelerated stage of development in the past 20 years, both academically and commercially."

Who is competing with Neuralink? Although the scientific community has been studying brain-computer interfaces since the 1960s, it has to be admitted that it still depends on the high-profile Musk. However, as the progress of the experiment is pushed again and again, Neuralink is no longer a "dust-free" existence in the industry. When I raised my eyes, I had already been surrounded by heroes.

Neuralink's "number one competitor" is the aforementioned Synchron, whose CEO is Thomas Oxley, a neurointerventionist.

Unlike Neuralink, which has always wanted to develop a new implant and then implant it into the brain through robot-assisted simplified surgery, Synchron uses intravenous brain-computer interface technology.

In July last year, Synchron quickly won FDA approval and launched its first clinical trial in humans, and the product is expected to be commercially approved and officially available as soon as 2024.

So far, Synchron has passed round An and round B financing, totaling $50 million (about 350 million yuan).

However, the relationship between Neuralink and Synchron extends beyond competitors. Earlier, there were media reports that Musk had contacted Thomas Oxley, founder and CEO of Synchron, to discuss an investment deal. The media also quoted people familiar with the matter as saying that before seeking to invest in Synchron, Musk expressed disappointment at the slow progress of Neuralink employees.

Interestingly, one of the investors in Synchron is Max Hodak, who left Neuralink. Before leaving, Max Hodak was a co-founder of Neuralink and is still a shareholder.

Max Hodak has not only invested in Synchron, but also founded another brain-computer interface company, Science Corp, and has raised $160 million.

The Science Corp interface uses photonics to manipulate the brain through exposure through the optic nerve of the eye. So far, Science Eye prosthesis products have been developed, and the company says Science Eye is suitable for rabbits. Over the next two years, the company plans to test the solution in humans.

In China, BrainCo (strong brain Technology), a year earlier than Neuralink, advocated non-invasive brain-computer interface technology. At present, the products have covered four major areas: rehabilitation, education, health, consumption and so on. BrainCo has officially disclosed that the company has completed more than $200m in financing and is valued at more than $1 billion.

Another company, Naohu Technology, took a clear-cut stand in choosing the same intrusive brain-computer interface device as Neuralink.

Its founder Tao Hu said, "the core challenge of brain-computer interface is how to strike a reasonable balance between maximizing brain use and minimally damaging the brain." Because the brain is too complex, I believe that the non-invasive brain-computer interface will play an important role in the fields of emotion regulation and cognitive assessment, but the real brain-computer interface can only be realized by directly connecting with neurons. The innovative brain-computer interface is a very high threshold for research and development, and China urgently needs independent core technology in this area. "

In September this year, Naohu Technology released the first brain-computer interface integrated semi-implanted medical grade b product at the parietal skull, which is 32 cubic centimeters in volume and 38 grams in weight, and is made of medical-grade titanium alloy.

In addition, Blackrock Neurotech, which develops implantable devices, and Paradromics, which has a partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense, are all on Neuralink's competitive list.

At present, the deep learning technology of artificial intelligence is not mature enough, the scale of cloud computing is not strong enough, the accuracy is not accurate enough, and the speed is not fast enough. However, the brain-computer interface can obtain and interpret very few brain signals, which can not reach the level of whole-brain simulation, so some enterprises are not only enhancing their hardware research and development strength, but also accumulating the ability of computing software.

In April, Blackrock Neurotech announced the acquisition of MindX, a space computing software company, to integrate its AR and AI technologies with its brain-computer interface (BCI) hardware.

On September 2, at the forum of "brain ·computer Intelligence Fusion-connecting the brain to the Future" of the 2022 World artificial Intelligence Conference, Muxi Integrated Circuit, Naohu Technology, cloud computing company ucloud, and quantum computing enterprise Turing Quantum jointly launched the Advanced Intelligence Alliance (faic).

"the brain-computer interface can obtain a lot of brain information, GPU can provide a lot of computing power to process data, and quantum computing also has its own computing paradigm," Chen Weiliang, Muxi's founder, chairman and chief executive, said to the media about the alliance's original intention.

The implication is that the combination of software and hardware technology will produce great application potential.

Pei Weihua, a researcher at the Semiconductor Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said that the progress of brain-computer interface in every aspect is inseparable from the support of several other aspects, and it is an interdisciplinary subject.

'We are now faced with the problem that without chips, when we do multi-channel, we have to rely on the process to make the lines finer and denser, or to increase the number of devices by stacking,'he added. But this is not the fundamental solution, so it still requires the cooperation of different professional teams in order to make the whole technology chain bigger and stronger.

03. How far is it from commercialization? According to the "brain-computer Interface Standardization White Paper 2021" released by the China Institute of Electronic Technology Standardization, the global brain-computer interface market is about US $1.2 billion in 2019 and is expected to reach US $3.7 billion in 2027. CAGR15.5%, currently accounts for 62% of downstream health care, followed by disease treatment.

According to the statistics of the China disabled Persons' Federation, there are 24.72 million people with physical disabilities, nearly 18 million people with visual impairment and 27.8 million people with hearing disabilities. According to incomplete statistics, the prevalence rate of senile dementia in China is 6%, the prevalence rate of depression and anxiety disorders is close to 7%, and the number of patients with other neurological diseases is more than 10 million, and is increasing rapidly with the increase of the degree of aging.

This means that the prediction of neural remodeling, neural substitution, neural regulation of brain-computer interface technology will have a market space of tens of trillions of dollars.

Driven by the huge demand, data show that from 2017 to 2022, 23 new companies in the medical + brain-computer interface field were established, resulting in a total of 53 financing transactions, with a cumulative financing amount of about 2.6 billion yuan.

Outside the field of medical and health, with the gradual maturity of technology, education, games, smart home, military and other potential applications of brain-computer interface. Among them, the consumption scene is another major scene in addition to medical care, such as sleep improvement, cognitive education, games, security monitoring and so on.

Guoxin Securities pointed out in the research report that in the long run, the software and hardware technologies related to brain-computer interface are expected to mature and bring brand-new interaction in the fields of VR / AR and meta-universe, and continue to be optimistic about the development of meta-universe, VR / AR and other fields.

A report released by McKinsey in 2020 estimates that brain-computer interface devices will generate an annual market value of $70 billion to $200 billion over the next 10-20 years.

However, if brain-computer interfaces want to be commercialized on a large scale, in addition to the need for further technological development, ethical issues can not be ignored.

For example, will it lead to some mandatory crimes? Is it the man who controls the machine, or the machine that controls the man? Whether human free will will face challenges and so on are all major ethical risks that human beings must face.

It can be predicted that although there are huge application scenarios in the commercialization of brain-computer interface, the landing speed still needs to come step by step.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Tech diagonal (ID:TechDJX2022), author: Mia, Editor | Fei Fei

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