Brain-computer interfaces are making big progress this year

The Transform Technology Summits start October 13th with Low-Code/No Code: Enabling Enterprise Agility. Eight months in, 2021 has already become a record year in brain-computer interface (BCI) funding, tripling the $97 million raised in 2019. BCIs translate human brainwaves into machine-understandable commands, allowing people to operate a computer, for example, with their mind. Just during the last couple of weeks, Elon Musk's BCI company, Neuralink, announced a $205 million in Series C funding, with Paradromics, another BCI firm, announcing a $20 million Seed round a few days earlier. Almost at the same time, Neuralink competitor Synchron announced it has received the groundbreaking go-ahead from the FDA to run clinical trials for its flagship product, the Stentrode, with human patients. Even before this approval, Synchron's Stentrode was already undergoing clinical trials in Australia, with four patients having received the implant.