Technology

Amputees say this bionic hand startup gives them both strength and grace — they can even pick up raw eggs without crushing them

Published

1 year ago

November 13, 2023

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Andrew Hitz with the Zeus hand.

Courtesy of Aether Biomedical

In 2011, Jeremy Schroeder was driving a four-wheeler near Sherwood, Ohio, when he crashed into a stop sign he hadn’t seen as the stone path suddenly turned to asphalt. The sign left a deep gash in Schroeder’s arm; he was rapidly losing blood.

Shroeder, who was 30 at the time, waited more than an hour for emergency medical services to arrive before he was finally airlifted to a nearby hospital.

When he woke up in a room across from his anxious wife, Schroeder was missing a hand.

“She goes, ‘I got bad news,'” he told CNBC in an interview, recalling the conversation.

Schroeder’s left arm was amputated around five inches below his elbow. He has four kids and manages a small farm where he drives tractors, harvests crops and cares for animals, so he was determined not to let his accident slow him down.

Now, 12 years later, Schroeder wears a bionic hand designed by the startup Aether Biomedical, and it’s business as usual for him. Aether’s hand, called the Zeus, can lift up to 77 pounds and switch between 12 different customizable grip patterns in real time. Schroeder, who is now an ambassador for the company, said he uses it for “everything,” whether it’s carrying groceries, driving his truck or caring for his kids.

Founded in 2018, Aether is based in Poland with U.S. headquarters in Chicago. Aether works with upper limb amputees, and anyone with an amputation level between the wrist and the shoulder can use its Zeus hand. Once patients are fitted with a prosthetic socket for their arm by a doctor, Aether’s device can fasten on the end.

More than 200 patients are using Aether’s Zeus hand, and like other bionic hands, it works by translating the electrical signals in the arm muscles. When a patient thinks of a grip like holding a bottle or pinching a needle, Aether’s sensors detect these electrical signals and its software converts them into actions.

“Just about anything you can think, you can do,” Schroeder said. “It’s really neat what some people can do with it.”

Jeremy Schroeder with the Zeus hand.

Courtesy of Aether Biomedical

Aether CEO Dhruv Agrawal said the Zeus hand is the strongest bionic hand on the market, and it’s also the only hand that can be remotely configured through an app, which is a big selling point for users.

It’s common for patients to need adjustments to their bionic devices, especially as they are first learning to use them, and it usually requires an in-person visit to a doctor’s office. But patients who use Aether’s device can have their clinician log on to the company’s cloud-based platform and reconfigure grip patterns and make other adjustments remotely.

Schroeder said this feature often saves him more than two hours of driving.

Aether also takes a unique approach to larger repairs.

The Zeus hand is made up of seven modules that can be easily replaced at a doctor’s office, said Sarra Mullen, head of U.S. operations at Aether. She said other bionic hands have to be sent back to the manufacturers to be repaired, which can leave patients stuck without their devices for extended periods.

“Imagine not having your hand for weeks, months at a time,” Mullen told CNBC in an interview. “We have this ability now to keep the device on the patient at all times, and that truly is remarkable.”

Aether’s Zeus hand is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and it’s covered by all major insurance payers. Aether said the cost of the Zeus hand will vary depending on the person. The company generates revenue, Mullen said, so its main focus is on scaling access to its technology.

On Monday, Aether announced it closed a $5.8 million funding round led by J2 Ventures and Story Ventures. Agrawal said the funding will mainly be used to improve the company’s manufacturing process. Aether currently has a backlog of devices it needs to ship out, he added.

In the U.S. alone, there are between 800,000 and 1 million estimated upper limb amputees, so there is plenty of room for Aether to grow. The challenge, Agrawal said, is winning over patients who have never wanted a bionic hand or who have been discouraged by past devices they’ve tried.

“If you used a device many years ago and didn’t like it, that doesn’t mean that you have to give up on it today,” he told CNBC in an interview. “Technology is improving.”

Given Aether’s presence in Poland, Agrawal said the company is also working to get its devices to people who have been injured because of the war in Ukraine. He said Aether is sending its first team to the region in a few weeks, and the company is expecting to fit between 300 to 500 people with the Zeus hand over the next year and a half.

Patients need to practice

The Zeus hand.

Courtesy of Aether Biomedical

If patients have never used a bionic hand before, Mullen said, it usually takes between four to six weeks to learn how to use Aether’s comfortably. She said patients first generally see a prosthetist, which is the kind of doctor that fits patients with artificial limbs. They get set up with the hand, and then go to occupational therapy to learn to use it.

It takes time and practice to understand how to operate the different grip patterns, Mullen said. But Andrew Hitz, a 61-year-old who lives about 40 miles south of Dallas, mastered the Zeus hand in just 10 minutes.

Hitz had an elective amputation below the elbow of his left arm in February of 2019 after suffering a serious accident on a side-by-side vehicle years earlier. He had tried to save his hand through a number of different procedures, and his surgeon eventually told him that he was out of options.

“Actually, it was the best thing that I ever did,” Hitz told CNBC in an interview. “I wish I would have jumped to the conclusion of having it taken off years prior, saving me some of the agony and pain of all the surgeries that I went through.”

Hitz has used other bionic hands before, and he said many of them are sitting on his shelf and collecting dust. He happened to stumble across Aether at a trade show in Dallas this year where tried out the Zeus hand. He said using it for the first time was like a “ray of bright sunshine.”

“Literally in 10 minutes I was picking up little blocks that this previous hand that I had for almost a year and a half I just never mastered,” he said.

Aether gave Hitz a hand for free, and he is now an ambassador for the company.

Like Schroeder, Hitz lives a very hands-on lifestyle and manages a small farm with his wife. He cares for chickens, sheep, goats, donkeys and more. He said the Zeus hand works great for holding rakes and shovels, driving his tractor, carrying feed and gathering hay.

Hitz said the Zeus hand also has a soft grip feature, which means he can use it to pick up eggs from his chicken coop.

“If I would have tried that with my other two, it would have smushed all over the place, egg everywhere,” Hitz said. “So that just blew my mind when I went up to the chicken coop, and I did not crush that egg.”

Out of Aether’s 50 employees, Agrawal said around 75% are dedicated to research and development, so the company is always looking ahead to what is next. He said Aether is already working on next generation devices, as well as better machine learning systems and digital training platforms.

He said ultimately, Aether’s goal is to help make bionic devices more accessible and easier to use.

“The amount of mental taxation that a user has to put in to use these devices has decreased a lot with our product,” he said. “And I think that is really key to ensuring that these devices don’t sit in a boardroom, but are actually used by patients.”

Technology

AI could affect 40% of jobs and widen inequality between nations, UN warns

Published

4 hours ago

April 4, 2025

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AI could affect 40% of jobs and widen inequality between nations, UN warns

Artificial intelligence robot looking at futuristic digital data display.

Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images

Artificial intelligence is projected to reach $4.8 trillion in market value by 2033, but the technology’s benefits remain highly concentrated, according to the U.N. Trade and Development agency.

In a report released on Thursday, UNCTAD said the AI market cap would roughly equate to the size of Germany’s economy, with the technology offering productivity gains and driving digital transformation.

However, the agency also raised concerns about automation and job displacement, warning that AI could affect 40% of jobs worldwide. On top of that, AI is not inherently inclusive, meaning the economic gains from the tech remain “highly concentrated,” the report added.

“The benefits of AI-driven automation often favour capital over labour, which could widen inequality and reduce the competitive advantage of low-cost labour in developing economies,” it said.

The potential for AI to cause unemployment and inequality is a long-standing concern, with the IMF making similar warnings over a year ago. In January, The World Economic Forum released findings that as many as 41% of employers were planning on downsizing their staff in areas where AI could replicate them.

However, the UNCTAD report also highlights inequalities between nations, with U.N. data showing that 40% of global corporate research and development spending in AI is concentrated among just 100 firms, mainly those in the U.S. and China.

Furthermore, it notes that leading tech giants, such as Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft — companies that stand to benefit from the AI boom — have a market value that rivals the gross domestic product of the entire African continent.

This AI dominance at national and corporate levels threatens to widen those technological divides, leaving many nations at risk of lagging behind, UNCTAD said. It noted that 118 countries — mostly in the Global South — are absent from major AI governance discussions.

UN recommendations

But AI is not just about job replacement, the report said, noting that it can also “create new industries and and empower workers” — provided there is adequate investment in reskilling and upskilling.

But in order for developing nations not to fall behind, they must “have a seat at the table” when it comes to AI regulation and ethical frameworks, it said.

In its report, UNCTAD makes a number of recommendations to the international community for driving inclusive growth. They include an AI public disclosure mechanism, shared AI infrastructure, the use of open-source AI models and initiatives to share AI knowledge and resources.

Open-source generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution.

“AI can be a catalyst for progress, innovation, and shared prosperity – but only if countries actively shape its trajectory,” the report concludes.

“Strategic investments, inclusive governance, and international cooperation are key to ensuring that AI benefits all, rather than reinforcing existing divides.”

Technology

Nvidia positioned to weather Trump tariffs, chip demand ‘off the charts,’ says Altimeter’s Gerstner

Published

16 hours ago

April 3, 2025

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Nvidia positioned to weather Trump tariffs, chip demand 'off the charts,' says Altimeter's Gerstner

Altimeter CEO Brad Gerstner is buying Nvidia

Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner said Thursday that he’s moving out of the “bomb shelter” with Nvidia and into a position of safety, expecting that the chipmaker is positioned to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.

“The growth and the demand for GPUs is off the charts,” he told CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report,” referring to Nvidia’s graphics processing units that are powering the artificial intelligence boom. He said investors just need to listen to commentary from OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk.

President Trump announced an expansive and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The plan established a 10% baseline tariff, though many countries like China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to steeper rates. The announcement sent stocks tumbling on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5%, headed for its worst day since 2022.

The big reason Nvidia may be better positioned to withstand Trump’s tariff hikes is because semiconductors are on the list of exceptions, which Gerstner called a “wise exception” due to the importance of AI.

Nvidia’s business has exploded since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and annual revenue has more than doubled in each of the past two fiscal years. After a massive rally, Nvidia’s stock price has dropped by more than 20% this year and was down almost 7% on Thursday.

Gerstner is concerned about the potential of a recession due to the tariffs, but is relatively bullish on Nvidia, and said the “negative impact from tariffs will be much less than in other areas.”

He said it’s key for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. And while the company’s chips are designed domestically, they’re manufactured in Taiwan “because they can’t be fabricated in the U.S.” Higher tariffs would punish companies like Meta and Microsoft, he said.

“We’re in a global race in AI,” Gerstner said. “We can’t hamper our ability to win that race.”

WATCH: Brad Gerstner is buying Nvidia

Technology

YouTube announces Shorts editing features amid potential TikTok ban

Published

18 hours ago

April 3, 2025

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YouTube announces Shorts editing features amid potential TikTok ban

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty Images

YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for Shorts, its short-form video feed that competes against TikTok.

The features come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is at risk of an effective ban in the U.S. if it’s not sold to an American owner by April 5.

Among the new tools is an updated video editor that allows creators to make precise adjustments and edits, a feature that automatically syncs video cuts to the beat of a song and AI stickers.

The creator tools will become available later this spring, said YouTube, which is owned by Google.

Along with the new features, YouTube last week said it was changing the way view counts are tabulated on Shorts. Under the new guidelines, Shorts views will count the number of times the video is played or replayed with no minimum watch time requirement.

Previously, views were only counted if a video was played for a certain number of seconds. This new tabulation method is similar to how views are counted on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, and will likely inflate view counts.

“We got this feedback from creators that this is what they wanted. It’s a way for them to better understand when their Shorts have been seen,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in a YouTube video. “It’s useful for creators who post across multiple platforms.”

WATCH: TikTok is a digital Trojan horse, says Hayman Capital’s Kyle Bass