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Dr. Joshua Bederson places Precision Neuroscience’s electrodes onto a brain.

Ashley Capoot

As the lights dimmed in an operating room at The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, Dr. Joshua Bederson prepared to make history.

Bederson, system chair for the Department of Neurosurgery at Mount Sinai Health System, is no stranger to long hours in an operating room. The former competitive gymnast has completed more than 6,500 procedures in his career, and he said he visualizes the steps for each one as if he’s rehearsing for a routine.   

On this particular morning in April, Bederson was readying for a meningioma resection case, which meant he would be removing a benign brain tumor. Bederson said his primary focus is always on caring for the patient, but in some cases, he also gets to help advance science. 

This procedure was one such case. 

A small crowd gathered as Bederson took his seat in the operating room, his silhouette aglow from the bright white light shining on the patient in front of him. Health-care workers, scientists and CNBC craned forward – some peering through windows – to watch as Bederson placed four electrode arrays from Precision Neuroscience onto the surface of the patient’s brain for the first time. 

An electrode is a small sensor that can detect and carry an electrical signal, and an array is a grid of electrodes. Neurosurgeons use electrodes during some procedures to help monitor and avoid important parts of the brain, like areas that control speech and movement.

Precision is a three-year-old startup building a brain-computer interface, or a BCI. A BCI is a system that decodes neural signals and translates them into commands for external technologies. Perhaps the best-known company in the field is Neuralink, which is owned by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Other companies like Synchron and Paradromics have also developed BCI systems, though their goals and designs all vary. The first application of Precision’s system will be to help patients with severe paralysis restore functions like speech and movement, according to its website. 

Stephanie Rider of Precision Neuroscience inspects the company’s microelectrode array

Source: Precision Neuroscience

Precision’s flagship BCI is called the Layer 7 Cortical Interface. It’s a microelectrode array that’s thinner than a human hair, and it resembles a piece of yellow scotch tape. Each array is made up of 1,024 electrodes, and Precision says it can conform to the brain’s surface without damaging any tissue.

When Bederson used four of the company’s arrays during the surgery in April, he set a record for the highest number of electrodes to be placed on the brain in real-time, according to Precision. But perhaps more importantly, the arrays were able to detect signals from the patient’s individual fingers, which is a far greater amount of detail than standard electrodes are able to capture.

Using Precision’s electrode array is like turning a pixilated, low-resolution image into a 4K image, said Ignacio Saez, an associate professor of neuroscience, neurosurgery and neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Saez and his team oversee Precision’s work with Mount Sinai.

“Instead of having 10 electrodes, you’re giving me 1,000 electrodes,” Saez told CNBC in an interview. “The depth and the resolution and the detail that you’re going to get are completely different, even though they somehow reflect the same underlying neurological activity.”

Bederson said accessing this level of detail could help doctors be more delicate with their surgeries and other interventions in the future. For Precision, the ability to record and decode signals from individual fingers will be crucial as the company works to eventually help patients restore fine motor control. 

The data marks a milestone for Precision, but there’s a long road ahead before it achieves some of its loftier goals. The company is still working toward approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and it has yet to implant a patient with a more permanent version of its technology. 

“I think these are little baby steps towards the ultimate goal of brain-computer interface,” Bederson told CNBC in an interview.

Inside the operating room

Dr. Joshua Bederson prepares for surgery at The Mount Sinai Hospital.

Ashley Capoot

Bederson’s surgery in April was not Precision’s first rodeo. In fact, it marked the 14th time that the company has placed its array on a human patient’s brain. 

Precision has been partnering with academic medical centers and health systems to perform a series of first-in-human clinical studies. The goal of each study varies, and the company announced its collaboration with Mount Sinai in March. 

At Mount Sinai, Precision is exploring different applications for its array in clinical settings, like how it can be used to help monitor the brain during surgery. In these procedures, surgeons like Bederson temporarily place Precision’s array onto patients who are already undergoing brain surgery for a medical reason. 

Patients give their consent to participate beforehand. 

It’s routine for neurosurgeons to map brain signals with electrodes during these types of procedures. Bederson said the current accepted practice is to use anywhere between four to almost 100 electrodes – a far cry from the 4,096 electrodes he was preparing to test. 

Electrode arrays from Precision Neuroscience displayed on a table.

Ashley Capoot

Precision’s arrays are in use for a short portion of these surgeries, so CNBC joined the operating room in April once the procedure was already underway. 

The patient, who asked to remain anonymous, was asleep. Bederson’s team had already removed part of their skull, which left an opening about the size of a credit card. Four of Precision’s arrays were carefully laid out on a table nearby.

Once the patient was stabilized, Precision’s employees trickled into the operating room. They helped affix the arrays in an arc around the opening on the patient’s head, and connected bundles of long blue wires at the other end to a cart full of equipment and monitors.

Dr. Benjamin Rapoport, Precision’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, quietly looked on. Every major procedure presents some risks, but the soft-spoken neurosurgeon’s calm demeanor never wavered. He told CNBC that each new case is just as exciting as the last, especially since the company is still learning. 

Experts help set up the wiring for Precision Neuroscience’s technology.

Ashley Capoot

Bederson entered the operating room as Precision’s preparations neared their end. He helped make some final tweaks to the set up, and the overhead lights in the operating room were turned off. 

Ongoing chatter quieted to hushed whispers. Bederson was ready to get started. 

He began by carefully pulling back a fibrous membrane called the dura to reveal the surface of the brain. He laid a standard strip of electrodes onto the tissue for a few minutes, and then it was time to test Precision’s technology. 

Using a pair of yellow tweezers called long bayonet forceps, Bederson began placing all four of Precision’s electrode arrays onto the patient’s brain. He positioned the first two arrays with ease, but the last two proved slightly more challenging. 

Bederson was working with a small section of brain tissue, which meant the arrays needed to be angled just right to lay flat. For reference, imagine arranging the ends of four separate tape measures within a surface area roughly the size of a rubber band. It took a little reconfiguring, but after a couple of minutes, Bederson made it happen.

Real-time renderings of the patient’s brain activity swept across Precision’s monitors in the operating room. All four arrays were working.  

In an interview after the surgery, Bederson said it was “complicated” and “a little bit awkward” to place all four arrays at once. From a design perspective, he said two arrays with twice as many points of contact, or longer arrays with greater spacing would have been helpful.  

Bederson compared the arrays to spaghetti, and the description was apt. From where CNBC was watching, it was hard to tell where one stopped and the next began.  

Once all the arrays were placed and actively detecting signals, Precision’s Rapoport stood with his team by the monitors to help oversee data collection. He said the research is the product of a true team effort from the company, the health system and the patient, who often doesn’t get to see the benefits of the technology at this stage. 

“It takes a village to make this sort of thing move forward,” Rapoport said. 

CNBC left the operating room as Bederson began removing the tumor, but he said the case went well. The patient woke up afterward with some weakness in their foot since the surgery was within that part of the brain, but Bederson said he expected the foot would recover in around three to four weeks. 

Employees from Precision Neuroscience collecting data.

Ashley Capoot

Rapoport was present at this particular surgery because of his role with Precision, but he’s well acquainted with the operating rooms at Mount Sinai. 

Rapoport is a practicing surgeon and serves as an assistant professor of neurosurgery at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Rapoport reports to Bederson, and Bederson said the pair have known one another since Rapoport was in residency at Weill Cornell Medicine.

Dr. Thomas Oxley, the CEO of the competing BCI company Synchron, is also a faculty member under Bederson. Synchron has built a stent-like BCI that can be inserted through a patient’s blood vessels. As of early February, the company had implanted its system into 10 human patients. It is also working toward FDA approval. 

Bederson has an equity stake in Synchron, but he told CNBC he didn’t realize how much it would prevent him from participating in research with the Synchron team. He has no monetary investment in Precision. 

“I really did not want to have any financial interest in Precision because I think it has an equally promising future and wanted to advance the science as fast as I could,” Bederson said. 

Rapoport also helped co-found Musk’s Neuralink in 2017, though he departed the company the following year. Neuralink is building a BCI designed to be inserted directly into the brain tissue, and the company recently received approval to implant its second human patient, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal on Monday. 

As the BCI industry heats up, Bederson said the amount that scientists understand about the brain is poised to “explode” over the next several years. Companies like Precision are just getting started. 

Dr. Joshua Bederson helps set up Precision Neuroscience’s electrode arrays.

Ashley Capoot

“I really feel like the future is where the excitement is,” Bederson said.

Rapoport said Precision is hoping to receive FDA approval for the wired version of its system “within a few months.” This version, which is what CNBC saw in the operating room, would be for use in a hospital setting or monitored care unit for up to 30 days at a time, he said. 

Precision’s permanent implant, which will transmit signals wirelessly, will go through a separate approval process with the FDA. 

Rapoport said Precision hopes to implant “a few dozen” patients with the wired version of its technology by the end of the year. That data collection would give the company a “very high level of confidence” in its ability to decode movement and speech signals in real-time, he said. 

“Within a few years, we’ll have a much more advanced version of the technology out,” Rapoport said.

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Microsoft layoffs hit 830 workers in home state of Washington

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Microsoft layoffs hit 830 workers in home state of Washington

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the Axel Springer building in Berlin on Oct. 17, 2023. He received the annual Axel Springer Award.

Ben Kriemann | Getty Images

Among the thousands of Microsoft employees who lost their jobs in the cutbacks announced this week were 830 staffers in the company’s home state of Washington.

Nearly a dozen game design workers in the state were part of the layoffs, along with three audio designers, two mechanical engineers, one optical engineer and one lab technician, according to a document Microsoft submitted to Washington employment officials.

There were also five individual contributors and one manager at the Microsoft Research division in the cuts, as well as 10 lawyers and six hardware engineers, the document shows.

Microsoft announced plans on Wednesday to eliminate 9,000 jobs, as part of an effort to eliminate redundancy and to encourage employees to focus on more meaningful work by adopting new technologies, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The person asked not to be named while discussing private matters.

Scores of Microsoft salespeople and video game developers have since come forward on social media to announce their departure. In April, Microsoft said revenue from Xbox content and services grew 8%, trailing overall growth of 13%.

In sales, the company parted ways with 16 customer success account management staff members based in Washington, 28 in sales strategy enablement and another five in sales compensation. One Washington-based government affairs worker was also laid off.

Microsoft eliminated 17 jobs in cloud solution architecture in the state, according to the document. The company’s fastest revenue growth comes from Azure and other cloud services that customers buy based on usage.

CEO Satya Nadella has not publicly commented on the layoffs, and Microsoft didn’t immediately provide a comment about the cuts in Washington. On a conference call with analysts in April, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said the company had a “focus on cost efficiencies” during the March quarter.

WATCH: Microsoft layoffs not performance-based, largely targeting middle managers

Microsoft layoffs not performance-based, largely targeting middle managers

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CoreWeave is the first cloud provider to deploy Nvidia’s latest AI chips

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CoreWeave is the first cloud provider to deploy Nvidia's latest AI chips

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 2, 2024.

Ann Wang | Reuters

Nvidia’s Blackwell Ultra chips, the company’s next-generation graphics processor for artificial intelligence, have been commercially deployed at CoreWeave, the companies announced on Thursday.

CoreWeave has received shipments of Dell-built shipments based around Nvidia’s GB300 NVL72 AI systems, Dell said on Thursday. It’s the first cloud provider to install systems based around Blackwell Ultra.

The Blackwell Ultra is Nvidia’s latest chip, expected to ship in volume during the rest of the year. The systems that CoreWeave is installing are liquid-cooled and include 72 Blackwell Ultra GPUs and 36 Nvidia Grace CPUs. The systems are assembled and tested in the U.S., Dell said.

CoreWeave shares rose 6% during trading on Thursday, Dell shares were up about 2% and Nvidia rose less than 2%.

The announcement is a milestone for Nvidia.

Read more CNBC tech news

AI developers still clamor for the latest Nvidia chips, which have improvements that make them better for training and deploying models.

Nvidia said Blackwell Ultra can produce 50 times more AI content than its predecessor, Blackwell.

Investors closely watch how Nvidia manages the transition when it announces new AI chips to see if there are production issues or delays. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said in May that Blackwell Ultra shipments would start in the current quarter.

It’s also a win for CoreWeave, a cloud provider that rents access to Nvidia GPUs to other clouds and AI developers. Although CoreWeave is smaller than the cloud services operated by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, its ability to offer Nvidia’s latest chips first give it a way to differentiate itself.

CoreWeave historically has a close relationship with Nvidia, which owns a stake in the cloud provider. CoreWeave went public earlier this year, and the stock price has quadrupled since its IPO.

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IPO market gets boost from Circle’s 500% surge, sparking optimism that drought may be ending

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IPO market gets boost from Circle's 500% surge, sparking optimism that drought may be ending

Jeremy Allaire, CEO and co-founder of Circle Internet Group, the issuer of one of the world’s biggest stablecoins, and Circle Internet Group co-founder Sean Neville react as they ring the opening bell, on the day of the company’s IPO, in New York City, U.S., June 5, 2025.

NYSE

For over three years, venture capital firms have been waiting for this moment.

Tech IPOs came to a virtual standstill in early 2022 due to soaring inflation and rising interest rates, while big acquisitions were mostly off the table as increased regulatory scrutiny in the U.S. and Europe turned away potential buyers.

Though it’s too soon to say those days are entirely in the past, the first half of 2025 showed signs of momentum, with June in particular producing much-needed returns for Silicon Valley’s startup financiers. In all, there were five tech IPOs last month, accelerating from a monthly average of two since January, according to data from CB Insights.

Highlighting that group was crypto company Circle, which more than doubled in its New York Stock Exchange debut on June 5, and is now up sixfold from its IPO price for a market cap of $42 billion. The stock got a big boost in mid-June after the Senate passed the GENIUS Act, which would establish a federal framework for U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins.

Venture firms General Catalyst, Breyer Capital and Accel now own a combined $8 billion worth of Circle stock even after selling a fraction of their holdings in the offering. Silicon Valley stalwarts Greylock, Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital are set to soon profit from Figma’s IPO, after the design software vendor filed its public prospectus on Tuesday. Since its $20 billion acquisition agreement with Adobe was scrapped in late 2023, Figma has been one of the most hotly anticipated IPOs in startup land.

It’s “refreshing and something that we’ve been waiting for for a long time,” said Eric Hippeau, managing partner at early-stage venture firm Lerer Hippeau, regarding the exit environment. “I’m not sure that we are confident that this can be a sustained trend yet, but it’s been very encouraging.”

Another positive sign for the industry the past couple months was the performance of artificial infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which went public in late March. The stock was relatively stagnant for its first month on the market but shot up 170% in May and another 47% in June.

The IPO market is coming back, but it won't be linear, says Lazard CEO Peter Orszag

For venture firms, long considered the lifeblood of risky tech startups, IPOs are essential in order to generate profits for the university endowments, foundations and pension funds that allocate a portion of their capital to the asset class. Without handsome returns, there’s little incentive for limited partners to put money into future funds.

After a record year in 2021, which saw 155 U.S. venture-backed IPOs raise $60.4 billion, according to data from University of Florida finance professor Jay Ritter, every year since has been relatively dismal. There were 13 such offerings in 2022, followed by 18 in 2023 and 30 last year, collectively raising $13.3 billion, Ritter’s data shows.

The slowdown followed the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate-hiking campaign in 2022, meant to slow crippling inflation. As the lower-growth environment extended into years two and three, venture firms faced increasing pressure to return cash to investors.

‘Backlog of liquidity’

In its 2024 yearbook, the National Venture Capital Association said that even with a 34% increase in U.S. VC exit value last year to $98 billion, that number is 87% below the 2021 peak and less than half the average for the four years from 2017 through 2020. It’s a troubling dynamic for the 58,000 venture-backed companies that have raised a total of $947 billion from investors, according to the annual report, which is produced by the NVCA and PitchBook.

“This backlog of liquidity drought risks creating a ‘zombie company’ cohort — businesses generating operational cash flow but lacking credible exit prospects,” the report said.

Other than Circle, the latest crop of IPOs mostly consists of smaller and lesser-known brands. Health-tech companies Hinge Health and Omada Health are valued at about $3.5 billion and $1 billion, respectively. Etoro, an online trading platform, has a market cap of just over $5 billion. Online banking provider Chime Financial has a higher profile due largely to a years-long marketing blitz and is valued at close to $11.5 billion.

Meanwhile, the highest valued private companies like SpaceX, Stripe and Databricks remain on the sidelines, and AI highfliers OpenAI and Anthropic continue to raise massive amounts of cash with no intention of going public anytime soon.

Still, venture capitalists told CNBC that there are plenty of companies with the financial metrics to be public, and that more of them are readying for the process.

“The IPO market is starting to open and the VC world is cautiously optimistic,” said Rick Heitzmann, a partner at venture firm FirstMark in New York. “We are preparing companies for the next wave of public offerings.”

There are other ways to make money in the meantime. Secondary sales, a process that involves selling private shares to new investors, are on the rise, allowing early employees and investors to get some liquidity.

And then there’s what Mark Zuckerberg is doing, as he tries to position his company at the center of AI innovation and development.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024.

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Last month, Meta announced a $14 billion bet on Scale AI, taking a 49% stake in the AI startup in exchange for poaching founder Alexandr Wang and a small group of his top engineers. The deal effectively bought out half of the stock owned by investors, leaving them with the opportunity to make money on the rest of their holdings, should a future acquisition or IPO take place.

The deal is a big win for Accel, which led Scale AI’s Series A round in 2017, and is poised to earn more than $2.5 billion in the transaction. Index Ventures led the Series B in 2018, and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund led the Series C the following year at a valuation of over $1 billion.

Investors now hope the Federal Reserve will move toward a rate-cutting campaign, though the central bank hasn’t committed to one. There’s also ongoing optimism that regulators will make going public less burdensome. Last week, Reuters reported, citing sources familiar with the matter, that U.S. stock exchanges and the SEC have discussed loosening regulations to make IPOs more enticing.

Mike Bellin, who heads consulting firm PwC’s U.S. IPO practice, said he anticipates a diversity of IPOs across sectors in the second half of the year. According to data from PwC, pharma and fintech were among the most active sectors for deals through the end of May.

While the recent trend in IPO activity is an encouraging sign for investors, potential roadblocks remain.

Tariffs and geopolitical uncertainty delayed IPO plans from companies including Klarna and StubHub in April. Neither has provided an update on when they plan to debut.

FirstMark’s Heitzmann said the path forward is “not at all clear,” adding that he wants to see a strong quarter of economic stability and growth before confidently saying that the market is wide open.

Additionally, other than CoreWeave and Circle, recent tech IPOs haven’t had big pops. Hinge Health, Chime and eToro have seen relatively modest gains from their offer price, while Omada Health is down.

But virtually any activity beats what VCs were experiencing the last few years. Overall, Hippeau said recent IPO trends are generally encouraging.

“There’s starting to be kind of light at the end of the tunnel,” Hippeau said.

WATCH: Uptick in VC-backed startup deals

Uptick in VC-backed startup deals

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