Neuralink

Serial technology entrepreneur born in Pretoria, South Africa. He holds bachelor's degrees in Economics and Physics from the University of Pennsylvania (1997). He co-founded Zip2 (1995, sold to Compaq for $307 million), co-founded X.com which became PayPal (acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in 2002), founded SpaceX (2002) and led Tesla from early investor to CEO. He co-founded Neuralink in 2016 alongside a team of eight scientists and engineers with the stated goal of developing high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces to treat neurological conditions and eventually enable human-AI symbiosis. The company achieved first-in-human implantation in January 2024.

Electrical engineer with a B.S. from Caltech (2011) and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley (2016) under professors Elad Alon and Michel Maharbiz. His doctoral thesis introduced "neural dust" — ultrasonically powered, millimetre-scale neural recording sensors that formed the conceptual basis for minimally invasive BCI. Named MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 in 2020, he was recruited by Elon Musk to co-found Neuralink in 2016. He became the only remaining founder as others departed the company and currently serves as President and COO overseeing the technical and operational execution of the N1 implant programme.