Neuralink Corp., Elon Musk's startup that's working on a brain-computer interface, has raised a mammoth $280 million funding round.
Founders Fund, Peter Thiel's San Francisco-based venture firm, led Neuralink's Series D deal, the latter said in a post on X, the Musk-owned social media service formerly known as Twitter.
"We're extremely excited about this next chapter at Neuralink," the Fremont-based company said in its post.
Neuralink's valuation following the round was unclear. The company was last valued at $2 billion as part of its Series C deal two years ago, according to PitchBook Data. But its shares were trading in secondary markets this spring at prices that implied a valuation of $5 billion, according to Reuters.
Company representatives did not respond to a request for comment.
Neuralink is developing a device to treat a range of neurological conditions, including quadriplegia. The device is designed to be implanted in patients' skulls and connected by fine wires to their brains.
Its funding announcement comes three months after Neuralink secured approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin human clinical trials of its brain-computer gadget. Thus far limited to trials in animals, Neuralink plans to to implant the device in a tetraplegic or paraplegic patient by the end of the year, Musk said in June.
The move to human trials follows a string of controversies surrounding the company.
Early last year, the FDA rejected Neuralink's initial request to begin human trials of its device, in part over concerns about whether the gadget's battery could be removed without damaging patients' brains, Reuters reported.
In December, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's inspector general opened an investigation into allegations by the company's staff that rushed testing of prototype devices had resulted in cruelty to animals. And in February, the U.S. Department of Transportation opened an investigation into concerns that Neuralink didn't properly package implants that had been inserted and removed from monkey brains before transporting them.
