OpenAI, Thiel Back Brain Implant Startup to Fight Cancer — SkimNews
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- Coherence Neuro raised $45 million in seed funding from OpenAI’s venture arm and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund to develop brain implants that detect and treat cancer using AI.
- OpenAI is investing in Coherence Neuro, following its earlier funding of Merge Labs, a brain-computer interface company cofounded by CEO Sam Altman, to advance AI integration with neural data.
- Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund has now backed three brain-interface ventures: Coherence Neuro, Neuralink, and CTRL-labs, signaling sustained interest in merging AI with neural signal decoding.
- Ben Woodington, CEO and cofounder of Coherence Neuro, stated that AI is essential for analyzing large neural datasets and that brain data will be a valuable input for training models, though OpenAI will not access Coherence’s health data.
- Coherence Neuro has tested its implant in three patients during tumor removal surgery in Australia and plans long-term trials for glioblastoma, with the device designed to both detect tumor signals and deliver electrical stimulation to halt growth.
Why it matters: Coherence Neuro gains significant capital and validation from top AI investors to advance a novel cancer therapy, while OpenAI and Founders Fund deepen their stakes in brain-data ecosystems—where control over neural data could shape future medical and AI frontiers. The $45 million round enables human trials for a device that learns from data, a shift from static treatments.
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