Elon Musk’s startup Neuralink streamed a live video on Wednesday that showed a patient using the company’s brain implant to move a mouse and play chess on a computer.
Noland Arbaugh, 29, is the first human patient to ever get implanted with Neuralink’s device. The company is developing a brain-computer interface, or a BCI, that aims to help patients with severe paralysis control external technologies using only neural signals. Neuralink’s first product is called Telepathy, Musk said in a post on his social media site X in January.
In the video Wednesday, which was streamed on X, Arbaugh said he became a quadriplegic after suffering a diving accident around eight years ago. He said the surgery to get Neuralink’s implant, which requires patients to remove a portion of their skull to insert electrodes into the brain tissue, was “super easy.” He was released from the hospital the next day, he said.
“It’s not perfect, I would say that we have run into some issues,” Arbaugh said. “I don’t want people to think that this is the end of the journey, there’s still a lot of work to be done, but it has already changed my life.”
A BCI is a system that deciphers brain signals and translates them into commands for external technologies. If the system functions properly, patients with severe degenerative diseases like ALS could eventually text or scroll through social media with their minds.
Several companies like Paradromics, Synchron, Blackrock Neurotech and Precision Neuroscience have developed BCI systems with these capabilities, and many of them have also implanted devices in human patients. Neuralink is particularly well known in the field due to the high profile of Musk, who is also the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.
In many ways, the capabilities Neuralink demonstrated in its video Wednesday are not new. Dr. Nader Pouratian, chair of the Department of Neurological Surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center, said researchers have been developing and studying BCI technology for years.
“There are things that we’ve been able to do for decades, like control a cursor in two dimensions, which actually, for those of us who are in the field, is extremely simple to do as soon as you can get any brain signal,” he told CNBC in an interview earlier this month.
He said there is a lot of excitement around BCIs, but admitted there is a host of practical challenges to work out, like how to interpret and analyze brain signals and make them useful. Pouratian said he thinks transparency from both academia and the broader BCI industry about advancements will be key for progress.
Neuralink began recruiting patients for its first in-human clinical trial in the fall after it received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to conduct the study in May 2023, according to a blog post. In January, Musk said the company implanted its device in a human for the first time, and that the patient, now revealed to be Arbaugh, was “recovering well,” according to a post on X.
Aside from Musk’s posts, Neuralink has shared very few details about the scope or the nature of its trial. As of Wednesday, the trial is not listed on the website clinicaltrials.gov, which is where most medical device companies share information about their research to help inform the public and other health-care professionals about their ambitions.
It is not clear how many patients are participating in Neuralink’s trial, or what the trial is trying to demonstrate. The company will have to go through several rounds of safety and efficacy testing before it can get the FDA’s final seal of approval and go to market.
Neuralink did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
There is reason to be hopeful about Neuralink’s technology, said Dr. Marco Baptista, chief scientific officer of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, which provides resources to people who have become paralyzed. He told CNBC in early March that BCI technology could make a meaningful impact on patients, but like all emerging devices, Neuralink’s system should be regarded with skepticism.
He said he would like to see more traditional scientific reports from Neuralink to learn more about its technology, for instance. Neuralink is listed as an author on one white paper from 2019, according to PubMed.
“I’m hopeful that this information will start to come out through these mechanisms that are needed in science, and that is through peer reviewed publications,” Baptista said. “That hasn’t happened yet. Other companies are doing it.”
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.”
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.”
CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. president in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Via Reuters
Technology stocks plummeted Thursday after President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies sparked widespread market panic.
Apple led the declines among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group, dropping nearly 9%. The iPhone maker makes its devices in China and other Asian countries. The stock is on pace for its steepest drop since 2020.
Other megacaps also felt the pressure. Meta Platforms and Amazon fell more than 7% each, while Nvidia and Tesla slumped more than 5%. Nvidia builds its new chips in Taiwan and relies on Mexico for assembling its artificial intelligence systems. Microsoft and Alphabet both fell about 2%.
The drop in technology stocks came amid a broader market selloff spurred by fears of a global trade war after Trump unveiled a blanket 10% tariff on all imported goods and a range of higher duties targeting specific countries after the bell Wednesday. He said the new tariffs would be a “declaration of economic independence” for the U.S.
Companies and countries worldwide have already begun responding to the wide-sweeping policy, which included a 34% tariff on China stacked on a previous 20% tax, a 46% duty on Vietnam and a 20% levy on imports from the European Union.
China’s Ministry of Commerce urged the U.S. to “immediately cancel” the unilateral tariff measures and said it would take “resolute counter-measures.”
The tariffs come on the heels of a rough quarter for the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the worst period for the index since 2022. Stocks across the board have come under pressure over concerns of a weakening U.S. economy. The Nasdaq Composite dropped nearly 5% on Thursday, bringing its year-to-date loss to 13%.
Trump applauded some megacap technology companies for investing money into the U.S. during his speech, calling attention to Apple’s plan to spend $500 billion over the next four years.