Technology

This AI company wants to help you control your dreams

Published

2 years ago

October 4, 2023

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Prophetic AI

Courtesy: Prophetic AI

When Eric Wollberg and Wesley Berry met in March, Wollberg was chasing the idea of using lucid dreams to explore consciousness and Berry was working with the musician Grimes on translating neural signals into art. Both were fascinated by how brain-imaging tools could help paint a picture of someone’s thought patterns.

The two, ages 29 and 27, respectively, co-founded Prophetic that same month. It’s a tech startup building what the company calls the “world’s first wearable device for stabilizing lucid dreams.” It’s a headband-like device that issues focused ultrasound signals.

Lucid dreams occur when a person sleeping becomes aware they’re dreaming and may be able to control parts of the dream.

The startup has raised a previously unreported $1.1 million funding round with participation from a16z’s Scout Fund, and led by BoxGroup, the VC fund known for being first to invest in fintech company Plaid. To prototype the noninvasive device, dubbed the “Halo,” Prophetic has partnered with Card79 — the same company that designed and built hardware for Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company, Neuralink.

Prophetic’s hardware bet comes at a time when a handful of artificial intelligence companies are investing in devices or wearables. Humane AI, a company founded in 2017 by former Apple employees, debuted its wearable — the AI Pin — on the runway last week at Paris Fashion Week. And famed iPhone designer Jony Ive and OpenAI’s Sam Altman are also reportedly discussing an AI hardware project.

Wollberg and Berry, Prophetic’s CEO and chief technology officer, respectively, plan to showcase a semi-working prototype either later this month or in early November. But the full test of the prototype, they say, will have to wait until the third or fourth quarter of 2024, after the conclusion of a yearlong study on brain imaging conducted in partnership with the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, part of Radboud University in the Netherlands.

The co-founders have the type of lofty dreams typical of a modern-era tech startup, with Wollberg comparing the company to OpenAI. Its mission is to work “collectively towards understanding the nature of consciousness” and its LinkedIn page reads, “Prometheus stole fire from the gods, we will steal dreams from the prophets.”

But a year out from a fully working prototype, with plans to ship devices starting in spring 2025, Prophetic is still a ways away from delivering on its promises.

Lucid dreaming through a headset

Lucid dreaming has fascinated the public and the neuroscience community alike for decades, spawning references across pop culture, from films like “The Matrix” and “Inception,” to a Reddit community (r/LucidDreaming) with more than 500,000 members. Neuroscientific studies on the subject date back to the 1970s, according to research published in the National Library of Medicine, but interest has increased with the expansion of the cognitive neuroscience field.

Wollberg had his first lucid dream at age 12, and though he doesn’t remember exactly what he did, he called it “just about the most profound experience I’ve ever had.” In college, he started lucid dreaming twice a week and realized he wanted to create a way to use the practice to explore consciousness on a deeper level.

Meanwhile, co-founder Berry had a background in neurotech prototyping — specifically, feeding electroencephalogram, or EEG, data into a transformer neural network, an AI model pioneered by Google, to explore what people may be seeing in their minds. That’s the kind of work he had been doing with Grimes.

“Eric came to me and he told me what he was working on, and I didn’t think the technology was there at that time — we can’t induce dreams, let alone lucid ones, so how could this be possible?” Berry told CNBC. “The defining moment for me was when I realized that you’re not inducing the dream state itself — someone is already dreaming normally, which happens for most people multiple times a week. You’re simply activating the prefrontal cortex, and it turns lucid.”

Wollberg and Berry are counting on the results of the Donders Institute’s yearlong study to provide enough training data for their AI to work on the Halo device. The golden-ticket type of brain data they’re looking for via the study is gamma frequencies — the fastest measurable “band” of brain wave frequencies, which occur in states of deep focus and are a hallmark of an active prefrontal cortex, which is believed to be a defining characteristic of lucid dreams.

While today’s leading transformer models that underpin tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT deal in inputs and outputs of text, Berry is aiming to do something differently with Prophetic. His plan is to use a convolutional neural net to decode brain-imaging data into “tokens,” then feed those into the transformer model in a way it can understand them.

“You can create this closed loop where the model is learning and figuring out what sort of sequences of brain states need to occur, what sort of sequences of neuro-stimulation need to occur, in order to maximize the activation of the prefrontal cortex,” Berry said.

Prophetic’s goal with the prototype is to use focused ultrasounds to stimulate the user’s prefrontal cortexes while dreaming. Research suggests that focused ultrasound stimulation can improve working memory, and Berry compares that, in a way, to the idea of not knowing how you got somewhere while dreaming. It’s part of why he believes there’s a “really, really, really good shot that this works.”

“My conviction strongly comes from how it feels like a quantum leap … when you’re using this focused ultrasound,” Berry said. “It’s quite a bit better than everything else that’s been done.”

Technology

Google says Fox channels to go dark on YouTube TV if agreement isn’t reached

Published

6 hours ago

August 25, 2025

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Google says Fox channels to go dark on YouTube TV if agreement isn't reached

Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images

Google-owned YouTube on Monday said it may remove channels including Fox Broadcast Network, Fox News and Fox Sports from its TV streaming platform if it doesn’t reach an agreement with Fox Corporation.

YouTube TV’s renewal date with Fox is coming on Wednesday, and while the two companies have been in ongoing negotiations, they’ve been unable to reach a deal, the YouTube team wrote in a blog post. The company also emailed YouTube TV subscribers about the potential fall out with Fox.

“Fox is asking for payments that are far higher than what partners with comparable content offerings receive,” YouTube wrote in the blog. “Our priority is to reach a deal that reflects the value of their content and is fair for both sides without passing on additional costs to our subscribers.”

If YouTube is unable to reach a new agreement by 5 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday, the Fox channels will become unable on YouTube TV, the Google company said. YouTube pays broadcasters like Fox to carry their channels, and a blackout could have implications on advertisers and millions of viewers who cut their cords to stream Fox’s various channels on YouTube TV.

“While Fox remains committed to reaching a fair agreement with Google’s YouTube TV, we are disappointed that Google continually exploits its outsized influence by proposing terms that are out of step with the marketplace,” the media company said in a statement.

The Fox standoff represents the latest contract dispute between content companies and delivery networks as viewers increasingly ditch cable.

In February, Paramount Global notified YouTube TV subscribers that more than 20 channels including CBS, BET, Comedy Central, MTV and Nickelodeon could go dark on the service if the two didn’t reach a deal. Shortly after, YouTube TV and Paramount announced a multi-year distribution deal.

YouTube TV’s base plan costs $82.99 per month and includes over 100 live channels and unlimited cloud DVR. YouTube said a key part of its commitment to users is its partnership with content providers like Fox, “which allows us to carry a wide variety of channels.”

If Fox does go offline for an extended period of time, YouTube will give its members a $10 credit, the Google company wrote. Users will also be able to watch Fox content by signing up for Fox One, Fox’s streaming service, the blog said.

YouTube recently overtook Netflix, which has a market cap of $515 billion, as the top streaming platform in terms of audience engagement. Google does not provide official subscriber numbers for YouTube TV, but in its February 2024 letter, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced that the service had more than 8 million subscribers. MoffettNathanson principal analyst Michael Nathanson has estimated that YouTube TV has approximately 9.4 million paying subscribers.

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Technology

Musk’s xAI sues Apple, OpenAI alleging anticompetitive scheme harmed X, Grok

Published

14 hours ago

August 25, 2025

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Musk’s xAI sues Apple, OpenAI alleging anticompetitive scheme harmed X, Grok

Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, attends the Viva Technology conference at the Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris on June 16, 2023.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Elon Musk‘s xAI sued Apple and OpenAI on Monday, accusing the pair of an “anticompetitive scheme” to thwart artificial intelligence rivals.

The lawsuit, filed by Musk’s AI startup xAI and its social network business X, alleges Apple and OpenAI have “colluded” to maintain monopolies in the smartphone and generative AI markets.

Musk’s xAI acquired X in March in an all-stock transaction.

It accuses Apple of deprioritizing so-called “super apps” and generative AI chatbot competitors, such as xAI’s Grok, in its App Store rankings, while favoring OpenAI by integrating its ChatGPT chatbot into Apple products.

“In a desperate bid to protect its smartphone monopoly, Apple has joined forces with the company that most benefits from inhibiting competition and innovation in AI: OpenAI, a monopolist in the market for generative AI chatbots,” according to the complaint, which was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement: “This latest filing is consistent with Mr. Musk’s ongoing pattern of harassment.”

Representatives from Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Tesla CEO launched xAI in 2023 in a bid to compete with OpenAI and other leading chatbot makers.

Nvidia’s new ‘robot brain’ goes on sale for $3,499 as company targets robotics for growth

Published

14 hours ago

August 25, 2025

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Nvidia's new 'robot brain' goes on sale for ,499 as company targets robotics for growth

Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, is seen on stage next to a small robot during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.

Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters

Nvidia announced Monday that its latest robotics chip module, the Jetson AGX Thor, is now on sale for $3,499 as a developer kit.

The company calls the chip a “robot brain.” The first kits ship next month, Nvidia said last week, and the chips will allow customers to create robots.

After a company uses the developer kit to prototype their robot, Nvidia will sell Thor T5000 modules that can be installed in production-ready robots. If a company needs more than 1,000 Thor chips, Nvidia will charge $2,999 per module.

CEO Jensen Huang has said robotics is the company’s largest growth opportunity outside of artificial intelligence, which has led to the Nvidia’s overall sales more than tripling in the past two years.

“We do not build robots, we do not build cars, but we enable the whole industry with our infrastructure computers and the associated software,” said Deepu Talla, Nvidia’s vice president of robotics and edge AI, on a call with reporters Friday.

The Jetson Thor chips are based on a Blackwell graphics processor, which is Nvidia’s current generation of technology used in its AI chips, as well as its chips for computer games.

Nvidia said that its Jetson Thor chips are 7.5 times faster than its previous generation. That allows them to run generative AI models, including large language models and visual models that can interpret the world around them, which is essential for humanoid robots, Nvidia said. The Jetson Thor chips are equipped with 128GB of memory, which is essential for big AI models.

Companies including Agility Robotics, Amazon, Meta and Boston Dynamics are using its Jetson chips, Nvidia said. Nvidia has also invested in robotics companies such as Field AI.

However, robotics remains a small business for Nvidia, accounting for about 1% of the company’s total revenue, despite the fact that it has launched several new robot chips since 2014. But it’s growing fast.

Nvidia recently combined its business units to group its automotive and robotics divisions into the same line item. That unit reported $567 million in quarterly sales in May, which represented a 72% increase on an annual basis.

The company said its Jetson Thor chips can be used for self-driving cars as well, especially from Chinese brands. Nvidia calls its car chips Drive AGX, and while they are similar to its robotics chips, they run an operating system called Drive OS that’s been tuned for automotive purposes.