Cortical Labs was founded in 2019 by Melbourne doctor and engineer Hon Weng Chong. It has built the world’s first commercial computer that runs on living human neurons.
The product
The CL1 grows hundreds of thousands of lab cultured human neurons on a silicon chip. The chip feeds them signals, the neurons respond, form networks and learn.
What it has learned
- In 2022, their DishBrain system learned to play Pong in five minutes
- This year, they showed their neurons learning Doom
The money
Over US$11 million raised, backed by Horizons Ventures, Blackbird and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture arm.
The scale
A Bio Data Centre in Melbourne with 120 CL1 units, and a Singapore facility planned to scale to 1,000.
My read
This is the most “wait, that’s real?” company in ANZ. Biological computing is very early, but nothing else in the region looks remotely like it.