Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Let me tell you
Speaker 1: we have a new star. A star is born.
Speaker 2: Elon comes up on Mars Juson Kennemy.
Speaker 3: He is the Thomas Edison plus plus plus of our age.
Speaker 2: Probably his whole life is from a position of insecurity.
Speaker 1: I feel for the guy. I would say ninety eight
Speaker 1: percent really appreciate what he does.
Speaker 4: But those two percent that are nasty, they are up
Speaker 4: in fourth post.
Speaker 1: We are meant for great things in the United States
Speaker 1: of America, and Elon reminds us of that we don't
Speaker 1: have a fourth branch of governments called Elon Musk. Welcome
Speaker 1: to elan Ing, Bloomberg's weekly podcast about Elon Musk. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 1: April twenty second. I'm your host, David Papadopoulos, now sometimes
Speaker 1: lost in the shuffle of all things Elon is one
Speaker 1: of his most high tech and potentially consequential companies, Neuralink.
Speaker 1: Last year, the company managed to insert a chip in
Speaker 1: the brain of a paralyzed man that allows him, to,
Speaker 1: among other things, move the pieces of an online chessboard
Speaker 1: just by thinking, which is pretty cool. The company has
Speaker 1: big Glance for twenty twenty five and is trying to
Speaker 1: move fast in an industry that is quickly heating up.
Speaker 1: So I asked Sarah Friar, longtime regular on this show,
Speaker 1: to hop on and catch us all up on the
Speaker 1: race to control human brain waves. But first, it's Tesla
Speaker 1: earnings day. Now, I know, I know it can often
Speaker 1: seem like every Tesla earnings call is a do or
Speaker 1: die moment for Elon, but this one really does feel big,
Speaker 1: with Doze a lightning rod of controversy, Tesla's sales and
Speaker 1: stock price sinking, and global protest raging. Even longtime Tesla
Speaker 1: bulls are worried, very worried that permanent damage has been
Speaker 1: done to the brand. So when Elon takes the mic
Speaker 1: this evening, the stakes will be very high to talk
Speaker 1: about what to expect from the earnings report and the call,
Speaker 1: and what Elon can and cannot achieve on it. I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here with our regulars, Max Chafkin and Dana Hull.
Speaker 1: Max Elo to you, sir, Hello David, Hey Danna, Hello again,
Speaker 1: Hey Danna. So Dana. I will note that as I
Speaker 1: was being the good Bloomberg employee, I am working hard
Speaker 1: at night Sunday night, I saw a story with the
Speaker 1: headline drop Tesla bull calls Code Red saying Musk needs
Speaker 1: to leave Doge, this is our good friend, the bull
Speaker 1: of bulls. Dan ives the man who is to Tesla
Speaker 1: bulls what Max Chafkin is to mets fandom. Okay, and
Speaker 1: you have him quoted in here from his report, Danna
Speaker 1: saying Tesla is Musk, and Musk is Tesla, and anyone
Speaker 1: thinks the brand damage Musk has inflicted is not a
Speaker 1: real thing, just spend some time speaking to car buyers
Speaker 1: in the US, Europe and Asia. Then, Dana, just minutes
Speaker 1: before we came up to record this show, you dropped
Speaker 1: this piece. Treasurers of eight US states, including California and Illinois,
Speaker 1: shot a letter to the Tesla board that essentially says, Hey,
Speaker 1: Tesla board, the company is driverless. There are no driverless cars,
Speaker 1: but we do have a driver less company. Where's the CEO?
Speaker 1: Why aren't you bringing the CEO to heal? So it
Speaker 1: strikes me that on the cusp of this earnings call,
Speaker 1: the mood is getting bleaker by the minute.
Speaker 3: This is all true, and at the same time, like
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm in groundhog Day because I have
Speaker 3: been at this very point countless other times, like most
Speaker 3: recently when Musk bought Twitter, which is now called X
Speaker 3: And like the board and these pension funds and these
Speaker 3: states like all went through the same exercise. So it's like,
Speaker 3: I don't want to downplay the severity of the crisis
Speaker 3: that Tesla is in, just want a table set by
Speaker 3: saying that I have been here before. And typically what
Speaker 3: happens is things are dire. Investors are upset. There's all
Speaker 3: this like scrambling. People are like, why doesn't Tesla have
Speaker 3: a COO or a president? What's the succession plan? Why
Speaker 3: doesn't Elon ever focus on this company? And then he
Speaker 3: pulls something out of a hat and he gives investors
Speaker 3: enough to be excited about, whether it's AI or the
Speaker 3: ROBOTAXI or his end to end neural nets or whatever
Speaker 3: that like they get like excited again about the rosy future.
Speaker 3: And so once again we're coming into an earnings call where, yes,
Speaker 3: like sales in the first quarter were terrible, gross margins
Speaker 3: are going to be terrible. Free clash flow is something
Speaker 3: to look at, but like investors already know that it's
Speaker 3: a terrible quarter. So what's going to be important is
Speaker 3: Elon's tone on the call, and Max and I often
Speaker 3: like text each other like, oh today we have dire Elon.
Speaker 4: Or oh no, he's actually embulent Elon.
Speaker 3: And I think the big question is he going to
Speaker 3: say in his prepared remarks his time at Doze is
Speaker 3: coming to an end? Or are any of the cell
Speaker 3: side analysts actually gonna have the balls to ask him
Speaker 3: when he's coming back, or or are they going to
Speaker 3: avoid it completely like that is the elephant in the room,
Speaker 3: Like the brand damage is all because of his work.
Speaker 1: With Doje and Max, that is true that there's always
Speaker 1: been some sort of rabbit in the hat that Elon
Speaker 1: has been able to pull out in these earnings calls
Speaker 1: and hey, look over here, don't mind the fundamentals or
Speaker 1: this or that. Look at what's coming in three months,
Speaker 1: six months, twelve years, thirty years. That's what you should
Speaker 1: be excited about. My question is, given what we've seen
Speaker 1: in the last few months and the state of affairs
Speaker 1: there at Tesla, are those rabbits gonna work Unless the
Speaker 1: rabbit is I. Elon musk Am leaving Doge in the
Speaker 1: next twenty four hours and I will start paying it,
Speaker 1: really paying attention to Tessel, along with SpaceX and XAI
Speaker 1: and neuralink and all these other things. But no, I'm
Speaker 1: really doing that. I'm really leaving doge. Okay, that would
Speaker 1: be a hell of a rabbit. Do the other rabbits
Speaker 1: work Right now, I.
Speaker 5: Think it's getting harder to see what he could say, because,
Speaker 5: as Dana is saying, like for years now, he has
Speaker 5: been trying to spin the story forward towards driverless cars,
Speaker 5: towards humanoid robots, towards giant supercomputers or whatever, and like
Speaker 5: at a certain point there's the like, okay, like show
Speaker 5: me the money, show me the driverless car. I mean,
Speaker 5: Tesla's shareholders have been very patient with Elon Musk, and
Speaker 5: I think, like there's no reason to think that their
Speaker 5: patience is gonna instantly zap that Kathy Wood and her Ilk,
Speaker 5: who have been basically counting on the Robotaxi to create
Speaker 5: this enormous, you know, multi trillion dollar economy that will
Speaker 5: essentially like replace the entire auto industry. Like, I don't
Speaker 5: think enough has changed to cause them to doubt that thesis.
Speaker 5: So I think it is more likely that we're gonna
Speaker 5: hear more of the same from Elon Musk, he's going
Speaker 5: to talk about the Austin Robotaxi like they are framing
Speaker 5: this as an earnings call and a company update. Like
Speaker 5: my prediction is that the company update is just it's
Speaker 5: kind of the thing we know about. It's that there
Speaker 5: there's gonna be some sort of Robotaxi trial in Austin
Speaker 5: in June soon. And I think you're absolutely right, David,
Speaker 5: that if Elon Musk said now, the way I think
Speaker 5: you framed it is not how.
Speaker 1: He would do it.
Speaker 5: What he would do is he would declare victory. He
Speaker 5: would say, you know, we've successfully remade the government.
Speaker 1: We brought the bureaucrats down.
Speaker 5: Now I feel like it's safe to go back to Tesla.
Speaker 5: I don't know that he is ready to do that.
Speaker 5: I haven't seen a lot of signs that he is
Speaker 5: withdrawing from Trump. It does seem like Trump World is
Speaker 5: maybe attempting to put a little bit of distance between
Speaker 5: itself and Elon. But I'm not sure Elon is ready
Speaker 5: to quit Trump. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 5: I don't know that Trump is ready to quit Elon.
Speaker 3: A couple of things I want to mention. You know,
Speaker 3: the macro environment is crappy. I mean, treasury yields are rising,
Speaker 3: the stock market is tanking, like we're everyone is talking
Speaker 3: about a recession. This tariff policy that has everyone super
Speaker 3: confused is not good. And Tesla is not immune from tariffs.
Speaker 3: I mean they import a lot of their supply chain,
Speaker 3: including their LFP batteries come from China. So that's like
Speaker 3: a whole other thing that is weighing on the stock
Speaker 3: besides Elan and DOEZ. It's just like the macro environment
Speaker 3: is awful. Interest rates are still really high. People typically
Speaker 3: do not buy cars when interest rates are high and
Speaker 3: when people are losing their jobs left and right. So
Speaker 3: that's like a whole other thing is is the tariff implication.
Speaker 3: But then there's also just continuing, continuing market confusion about
Speaker 3: this idea that Tesla is going to come out with
Speaker 3: a cheaper car like Ed Ludlow and I reported a
Speaker 3: year ago that there really is no cheaper car. Like
Speaker 3: the quote unquote cheaper mass market car is maybe like
Speaker 3: a cheaper version of the Model Y and the Model
Speaker 3: three that's like lower range decontent, but like there's no
Speaker 3: new model. And you know, a couple of quarters ago,
Speaker 3: Tesla said, oh, we're going to be making this cheaper
Speaker 3: car in the first half of the year. Now, Reuter's
Speaker 3: had a history out saying that that has been delayed,
Speaker 3: but it's like, of course it's delayed, like it's not
Speaker 3: really a new model. So I just think that Tesla
Speaker 3: picked very clearly, like a year ago, that like the
Speaker 3: future is AI autonomy, robots and not high volumes.
Speaker 4: So but that's another thing that people are going to
Speaker 4: be looking for.
Speaker 1: They've achieved that the volumes are going down fast, and
Speaker 1: they're one new rollout, the cyber truck, which you know,
Speaker 1: it's funny. We have mentioned on the show that it
Speaker 1: hasn't gotten off to a roaring start, but I guess
Speaker 1: it was only this morning that I saw the actual numbers.
Speaker 1: And you guys feel free to yell at me if
Speaker 1: you've said these numbers on the show and I just
Speaker 1: failed to properly pay attention. But apparently Cox Automotive estimates
Speaker 1: that cyber truck sales dropped f fifty percent first quarter
Speaker 1: versus fourth quarter. Now, I know there's some you know,
Speaker 1: imperfections about doing a quarter on quarter comparison like that,
Speaker 1: but still, Jesus Christ, I mean, come on, you should
Speaker 1: be they should be ramping up wildly right.
Speaker 3: Well, they've had a lot of recalls of the cyber truck,
Speaker 3: and the cyber truck is still expensive. And the fourth
Speaker 3: quarter is always the big quarter because you know there's
Speaker 3: a big sort of end of the year push. But yeah, no,
Speaker 3: the cyber truck is a I mean, cyber truck is
Speaker 3: not a big selling you're about to.
Speaker 1: Say disaster that you were going to say disaster. Is
Speaker 1: it a disaster, Dana Hall.
Speaker 3: But the other thing that I think so funny is
Speaker 3: that the cyber truck, of all the cars and Tesla's
Speaker 3: line up, is like the epitome of Elon Musk himself.
Speaker 3: So that's why you're seeing like dog walkers in Brooklyn
Speaker 3: leaving their like you know, bags on the car of
Speaker 3: the truck where it is the epitome of Elon himself
Speaker 3: because he wanted this thing. His other executives wanted, like
Speaker 3: you know, to go high volume. Like the cyber truck
Speaker 3: is Elon, and Elon is the cyber truck. So as
Speaker 3: much as the backlash is impacting the brand, it is
Speaker 3: that vehicle that is that is burying the front of it.
Speaker 5: It's the new Elon. It's the it's the trolling, social
Speaker 5: media addicted you know, hyper partisan Trump supporter version of Elon.
Speaker 5: Of course, like the Model three is also Elon. I
Speaker 5: mean that, And that is the thing that like is
Speaker 5: so weird about what has happened. Like Tesla was able
Speaker 5: to break the mold essentially for an automaker in a
Speaker 5: bunch of different ways, and and one of the things
Speaker 5: that had going for it was Elon Musk and the
Speaker 5: brand that he has like cultivated around himself. And what
Speaker 5: we've seen is like taking that asset, that thing that.
Speaker 6: Made Tesla special and made it so successful and throwing
Speaker 6: it in the wood chipper along with USAID and you know,
Speaker 6: and other parts of the federal government.
Speaker 1: Now, one thing we haven't mentioned yet is optimists going
Speaker 1: to space or are we going to get a lot
Speaker 1: of optimist talk on this call? Optimist the robot.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, come on sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, hey, Musk says that Optimist is going to
Speaker 3: go to Mars on starship by like the end of
Speaker 3: next year, and he's very excited about Optimists.
Speaker 4: I mean that is like.
Speaker 3: I think on the last call you talked about optimists
Speaker 3: more than the ROBOTAXI. So yeah, I'm sure we'll get
Speaker 3: an optimist update.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The other thing that I think is just so weird
Speaker 3: about the earnings calls and Max and I have listened
Speaker 3: to like so many of them over the years, is
Speaker 3: that they never introduced who the other executives are, so like,
Speaker 3: I'm always right, I'm.
Speaker 4: Always in ode.
Speaker 3: Never they never say and now we're gonna hear from
Speaker 3: you know, like so and so who leads like autopilot software,
Speaker 3: like Elon talks and then like some other random executive.
Speaker 1: Pipes, you ain't Elon Musk, You're just you're just a sidekick,
Speaker 1: an anonymous, faceless sidekick.
Speaker 3: I mean, like multiple chats and everyone's like who's speaking,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, you know, this sounds like Lars. Oh no,
Speaker 3: it's not, that's Franz like whatever. You know, so we
Speaker 3: don't bother introducing the other executives. And then even if
Speaker 3: the other executives talk, Elon talks over them and interrupts them.
Speaker 3: It's just like it's unlike any other earnings call.
Speaker 1: That you've ever listened to.
Speaker 3: And it's like, I'm so Max and I are so
Speaker 3: used to it because we usually play bingo, But like
Speaker 3: if you've never listened to a Tesla earnings call. You
Speaker 3: really should. It will give you a lot of insight
Speaker 3: into how these things go. And it's also just frankly
Speaker 3: like so disappointing. I mean, could I say this on
Speaker 3: a Bloomberg show. Like the Shell side analysts, they're all
Speaker 3: about their trying to perfect their models. They don't actually
Speaker 3: ask the hard questions. The best person who really would
Speaker 3: try to nail Elon on particulars was Tony Sacandagia Bernstein,
Speaker 3: and he retired.
Speaker 1: But Van Ives has worked up as he is right now,
Speaker 1: goes out and grills Elon with a tough question or two.
Speaker 3: He's never He's almost never gets called on to ask
Speaker 3: the questions.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, Max, we need to wrap up here on Tesla,
Speaker 1: but let me ask you this before we do. Uh
Speaker 1: Test has been saying, this isn't just a quarterly earnings report,
Speaker 1: it's a company update. Are they're already starting to spin
Speaker 1: us here? We got some big grand reveal.
Speaker 5: I mean I think he needs given how poor we're
Speaker 5: expecting the earnings to be, given how bad the sales
Speaker 5: have been, I think he's going to be looking for
Speaker 5: some way, as we've been talking about, to spin this forward.
Speaker 5: And I think that company update it could be as
Speaker 5: as Danna said, an update about the way that the
Speaker 5: CEO is spending his time, although again I'm not I
Speaker 5: kind of doubt it that it could be an update
Speaker 5: about Rubotaxi efforts in Austin, and or it could be
Speaker 5: about something further down the pipe. And I think you
Speaker 5: asked Anna about optimists. It is certain he will bring
Speaker 5: up optimists because what Elon Musk has done always has done,
Speaker 5: is has found ways to sort of push the camera
Speaker 5: out like the focal point way into the future to
Speaker 5: this like really optim mystic future. And at this point,
Speaker 5: like robotaxis are kind of real, and they're also kind
Speaker 5: of obviously underwhelming. And so you know, Weimo has been
Speaker 5: doing the thing that Elon Musk has has been promising
Speaker 5: for years and at last I checked, it hasn't created
Speaker 5: a thirty trillion dollar industry. So like, as we get
Speaker 5: closer to the actual rollout of the robotaxi whatever it is,
Speaker 5: and I promise you it's not going to be a
Speaker 5: coast to coast, it's not going to be like, really
Speaker 5: a robotax is going to be like Weimo or something
Speaker 5: in one city which has been happening for years and years.
Speaker 5: So Elon's going to have to find some other way
Speaker 5: to keep that focal point in the future. And I think,
Speaker 5: you know, Humanoi wrote a robots probably what it is?
Speaker 1: Well, well, this is now truly the last thought I
Speaker 1: will leave you guys with on this that our good
Speaker 1: friend of the pod, Esha Day, and her piece previewing
Speaker 1: the earnings this morning had a quote from somebody saying,
Speaker 1: because the stock, as much as Tesla's stock is, it's
Speaker 1: still trades at seventy eight times forward earnings, which for
Speaker 1: those who aren't familiar with that metric, it's an incredible
Speaker 1: a lot of times for forward earnings. And the quote
Speaker 1: from this one investor is of all the stocks and
Speaker 1: the Magnificent seven, the tech stocks in Meg seven, it
Speaker 1: is Tesla whose valuation is almost entirely about the future. Basically,
Speaker 1: Max the stock is bulled ah.
Speaker 6: And that's the thing, like it could be.
Speaker 5: I think one of the big sort of like misunderstandings
Speaker 5: of Elon Musk's support for Donald Trump is this sense
Speaker 5: that like he was coming from a place of strength,
Speaker 5: and of course he was, he's the world's richest man.
Speaker 1: But in other ways this is a company that.
Speaker 5: Has always kind of been teetering, and it's always halfway
Speaker 5: between you know, taking over the world and like wildly
Speaker 5: underperforming expectations. And that's why Dana people like Dana me
Speaker 5: are a little bit like, you know, like why it's
Speaker 5: hard to get ex excited about anyone calls like, oh,
Speaker 5: this is going to be I mean, we are excited
Speaker 5: because this is our super Bowl, but you know, we
Speaker 5: see this movie every three months, so so like yeah,
Speaker 5: like I don't think this is going to be the
Speaker 5: thing that does Elon as CEO of Tesla like you know,
Speaker 5: but but on the other hand.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: We we live in we live in crazy times.
Speaker 3: I just want to say one thing, Nothing will compare
Speaker 3: as crazy.
Speaker 4: As now is with Trump.
Speaker 3: Nothing will compare to twenty eighteen, which, lest I remind you,
Speaker 3: is the year that Tesla struggled to ramp up the
Speaker 3: model three. Yes, Elon tried to take the company private
Speaker 3: through the four to twenty thing. He smoked pot with
Speaker 3: Joe Rogan. He called the tie Cave Rescuer a pedo guy.
Speaker 3: Executives are quitting left and right, like in real time,
Speaker 3: including the chief accounting officer. Like I like that that
Speaker 3: would be for me is is twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Those are all good points to which you know, I
Speaker 1: would say so Max, at the time that Dan is describing,
Speaker 1: maybe truly the company was teetering. It was trying to
Speaker 1: scale up and get to to where it is now.
Speaker 1: I don't think the company is teetering so much now.
Speaker 1: I think it's not. When you it's not.
Speaker 7: Still have a car company, yeah right, What you have
Speaker 7: is a stock right that is just incredibly valued even
Speaker 7: after a fifty percent drop.
Speaker 1: That's the you know, the big question. So when I said,
Speaker 1: I should also reframe it. The stock is in bulk,
Speaker 1: but boy, there's a lot of hocus pocus there. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the Tesla the business is has a very good
Speaker 5: business and drinking. But the stock, yeah yeah, Tesla. The
Speaker 5: stock though, as you're saying, as ESA's saying, like it
Speaker 5: it is entirely a lot of that value is is
Speaker 5: about is about the future and about assumptions that the
Speaker 5: market has made and that I'm not totally sure like
Speaker 5: why like what like what the what whether there's much
Speaker 5: of a basis in reality for those those assumptions.
Speaker 1: Dana, thank you as always, Thanks thank you. Okay, so
Speaker 1: now I'm joined by one of the OG's of the show,
Speaker 1: Sarah Friar, big tech team leader here at Bloomberg. Sarah,
Speaker 1: great to have you on. Thanks for having me, Okay, Sarah.
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk now about one of Elon's
Speaker 1: companies that, well, for us at least, it's kind of
Speaker 1: fallen off the radar just because it's been drowned out
Speaker 1: by Tesla and Doze and Doze and Doze and SpaceX
Speaker 1: and Tesla and Dose do And that's Neuralink, which is
Speaker 1: a pretty fascinating company, but that just again just doesn't
Speaker 1: make news every second of every day for starters. Remind
Speaker 1: our listeners what exactly Neuralink is and where it was
Speaker 1: as we last understood it, so that we can get
Speaker 1: into new developments.
Speaker 2: Must be nice to be at the Musk company that's
Speaker 2: not under the microscope, not super involved with what's going
Speaker 2: on in DC thinking about the future, like that's the
Speaker 2: sweet spot right.
Speaker 1: Just quietly beavering away doing their work.
Speaker 2: So, Neuralink is one of Musk's companies that is in
Speaker 2: the business of putting chips in people's brains to help
Speaker 2: them do things that their bodies can't do. Right now,
Speaker 2: they're focusing on quadriplegics, people who have no ability to
Speaker 2: use their arms or legs, and they've only had so
Speaker 2: far publicly three patients for this device, which again involves
Speaker 2: surgical implantation in the brain, attaching electrodes to your brain
Speaker 2: tissue to help you move a cursor on a computer
Speaker 2: to help you to make your needs known via your
Speaker 2: actual brain waves. Musk has talked about eventually leading us
Speaker 2: to symbiosis with artificial intelligence. That's extremely far away from
Speaker 2: the current reality, which is still very exciting, which is
Speaker 2: that they have this human trial that started last year
Speaker 2: where they are implanting devices into people's brains for real.
Speaker 2: They put their first chip in a patient named Nolan Arba.
Speaker 2: We talked about that on the podcast in the past.
Speaker 2: Since then, they've implanted the device in a few more people,
Speaker 2: and they've improved the technique.
Speaker 1: For a second, before we talk about that and the
Speaker 1: improvement in the technique, tell us about Nolan Arbaugh and
Speaker 1: what made him the right candidate for this chip.
Speaker 2: Well, Nolan Arba was a quadriphlegic, so he fit the
Speaker 2: parameters of what they needed to prove that they could
Speaker 2: actually make something that read somebody's thoughts that would allow
Speaker 2: him to now, for instance, play video games independently, which
Speaker 2: is really remarkable. This is on the road to helping
Speaker 2: with other motor conditions such as Parkinson's.
Speaker 4: They have a few.
Speaker 2: Initiatives looking into how they could work on vision this
Speaker 2: breakthrough status Project breakthrough status is what the FDA gives
Speaker 2: you if you're working on something that is so important
Speaker 2: it should be accelerated. Neuralink has one called blind Site,
Speaker 2: which is supposed to help with eye issues. So unfortunately
Speaker 2: for our ba, some of the electrodes detached from his
Speaker 2: brain tissue over the course of wearing the implant, and
Speaker 2: so the company had to rectify that, and so with
Speaker 2: future patients what they did, and then they now had
Speaker 2: total of three, and there was a second later in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. Then there was somebody early in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. This year they've tried to reduce the space
Speaker 2: between the chip and the brain no air bubbles. Now,
Speaker 2: even though this is a company that is relatively quiet
Speaker 2: in the muscaverse, this is going to be a big
Speaker 2: year for them. They've said that there might be twenty
Speaker 2: to thirty more patients this year.
Speaker 1: Well, wha wha, wha. So you go from basically, if
Speaker 1: my math is right, one not even one a quarter,
Speaker 1: one every four months or so. So now we're going
Speaker 1: to be doing a few a month.
Speaker 4: Well, that is the hope.
Speaker 2: I think. They just said that they are opening their
Speaker 2: prime trial, which is like basically the their integrated medical
Speaker 2: device trial, the trial for this telepathy chip. They tweeted
Speaker 2: saying they're calling for patients.
Speaker 4: So that is.
Speaker 2: Signed to the world like listen, We're ready for more.
Speaker 2: I think that that may have something to do also
Speaker 2: with the amount of competition that's cropping up. There are
Speaker 2: a lot of startups that are doing more in this
Speaker 2: space as we speak. Just recently, just a few days ago,
Speaker 2: Science Corp Rays over one hundred million from Cosla. They're
Speaker 2: starting with a retina implant to help with with eye issues.
Speaker 2: They also got breakthrough status from the FDA. But there
Speaker 2: are a few other startups, Parodramics, Precision Neuroscience that are
Speaker 2: working on similar things.
Speaker 1: You're saying the space is even getting more heated and
Speaker 1: more competitive, and Neuralink was chasing to begin with, right,
Speaker 1: But I.
Speaker 2: Think that Neuralink was very well funded. I mean they
Speaker 2: have more than six hundred million in funding. They last
Speaker 2: raised in twenty twenty three at a three point five
Speaker 2: billion valuation. I think a lot of that excitement and
Speaker 2: funding around neuralink is linked to Elon Musk himself. And
Speaker 2: I also think that you can't really get a way
Speaker 2: with cutting corners in this market the way you might
Speaker 2: be able to in a Tesla supply chain.
Speaker 1: Your cut corners and people die.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, and that would be very bad for business.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, so you mentioned that Nolan Arbaugh is able
Speaker 1: to play video games with his mind. Now and the
Speaker 1: other patients, what concretely, if anything beyond playing video games
Speaker 1: are they able to do with this technology. Understood of course,
Speaker 1: that this technology is still developing in the ideas that
Speaker 1: slowly but surely they're going to be able to add
Speaker 1: and add and add capacity, the aspiration being at some
Speaker 1: point that these quadriplegics are even able to stand up
Speaker 1: and walk. But as of right now, beyond playing video games,
Speaker 1: are they doing anything else.
Speaker 2: It's basically that Nolan Arba can control a computer with
Speaker 2: his thoughts, which goes a long way in today's world.
Speaker 2: Right you can move a cursor around and click on
Speaker 2: things the way you would do with your hand or
Speaker 2: use on a phone, but you can't if you're a quadriplegic.
Speaker 2: So that opens up a lot of possibilities to communicate,
Speaker 2: to make choices on the internet, and yes, to play
Speaker 2: video games. So I think that that is the main
Speaker 2: claim to fame at the moment. Eventually, yes, they hope
Speaker 2: to make patients able to do all sorts of things. Again,
Speaker 2: they plan to use this chip to work on conditions
Speaker 2: from obesity to bipolar to Parkinson's and then eventually communication
Speaker 2: between humans and computers directly, that kind of telepathic of symbiosis,
Speaker 2: as Musk said.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I suppose it is possible, and I just
Speaker 1: can't exactly. I'm just not sure what I should make
Speaker 1: of this. But at some point we're going to be
Speaker 1: able to simply download like entire encyclopedias into our brain
Speaker 1: and just retain them there, and I don't know, it
Speaker 1: all just starts getting really weird.
Speaker 2: It should eventually help us with memory retention, with you know,
Speaker 2: keeping us true to our diet plans, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's all kind of what's been talked about
Speaker 2: in this in this realm.
Speaker 1: I guess I just wonder this though, if I start
Speaker 1: downloading volumes of encyclopedias into my brain, well, I still
Speaker 1: have enough bandwidth to remember all the name all the
Speaker 1: names of mind.
Speaker 2: I expect that it'll be the computer that has the
Speaker 2: volumes of encyclopedias and you just you just like access
Speaker 2: it as you need.
Speaker 1: I see like it's up there in the cloud.
Speaker 2: And I the way we do now with the internet.
Speaker 2: But you know, we don't have It's not like our
Speaker 2: brains are going to have well who knows, right, I
Speaker 2: don't know what the future holds. What I do know
Speaker 2: is while companies like Neuralink are talking about this pie
Speaker 2: in the sky future while working on like the direct
Speaker 2: medical science, this idea of brain control of devices is
Speaker 2: actually pretty mainstream now in tech. Saw Meta came out
Speaker 2: with research just earlier this year on how they would
Speaker 2: be able to determine based on brain waves what you're
Speaker 2: going to type wow. And that's not with an invasive chip.
Speaker 2: That's just from putting a lectures on your brain on
Speaker 2: the outside. And they read people's activity while they typed
Speaker 2: and tried to make connections.
Speaker 1: And the hit rate was pretty good.
Speaker 2: It was better than people expected. Yeah, it was pretty good.
Speaker 2: It wasn't perfect, but it's baby steps. This is all
Speaker 2: baby steps. What people say is happening in their research,
Speaker 2: it's you know, these studies are very tailored to try
Speaker 2: to like produce something narrow, Okay, but.
Speaker 1: Any even The point is is that this is the
Speaker 1: entire industry is tacking and tacking quickly in this direction.
Speaker 2: Apple has a patent about reading your brain waves through
Speaker 2: air pods and that, yeah, exactly that that sounds very mainstream.
Speaker 2: Now that's this is all early days, but it's it's
Speaker 2: spooky enough that the idea that your brain activity might
Speaker 2: be accessible, yes, has caused a wave in reactions from
Speaker 2: state governments. There have been some early attempts to try
Speaker 2: to regulate the privacy of brainwave data. This is so
Speaker 2: early in the science, but governments have seen what happened
Speaker 2: with other technologies that have grown too quickly without regulation,
Speaker 2: and so we've seen some states try to decide now
Speaker 2: that your brain wave data should remain yours, unprivate and
Speaker 2: not used to sell you ads or something.
Speaker 1: Okay, now, Sarah, with most of Elon's companies, yeah, most
Speaker 1: we initially saw when Trump was elected, and of course
Speaker 1: Elon went to great lengths to help get him elected,
Speaker 1: a real spike in the valuation of his companies. Kesla
Speaker 1: initially surged wildly that, of course, for reasons stated again
Speaker 1: and again on this show, has since reversed and gone
Speaker 1: down quite a bit. But the valuation of many of
Speaker 1: his private companies SpaceX x XAI, which is now taken
Speaker 1: over x. You mentioned that back in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 1: Neuralink at evaluation of roughly three and a half billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Do you know what it is today and whether it
Speaker 1: also got that Trump election boost.
Speaker 2: Well so, without a new funding round, and we haven't
Speaker 2: heard of one happening yet, we can't say for sure
Speaker 2: what the valuation is. But what Reuter's found middle of
Speaker 2: last year was that there were some share trades on
Speaker 2: the secondary market, which is the market for you know,
Speaker 2: if we're private holders of neuralink stock, we could offload
Speaker 2: that stock or trade it for something else on a
Speaker 2: private market that's not necessarily accessible to everyone. They were
Speaker 2: trading at five billion valuation, so that is higher, but
Speaker 2: I would caution against saying that that doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: Neuralink now has a five billion dollar evaluation. Reuters attributed
Speaker 2: that to the interest in the company's shares just because
Speaker 2: of Elon Musk's prominence, the fact that if you invest
Speaker 2: in an Elon Musk company, there's going to be some
Speaker 2: bright future for that company kind of no matter what,
Speaker 2: because he will figure it out. That that's sort of
Speaker 2: the the Elon effect, the belief around his abilities.
Speaker 1: Any sense of whether Elon's proximity to this government, the
Speaker 1: Trump administration, any sense that that will be helpful. There's
Speaker 1: been a lot of speculation as to how that applies
Speaker 1: to SpaceX and Tesla and X itself. How about for Neuralink.
Speaker 2: I mean, there was some concern about Musk's influence earlier
Speaker 2: this year when those cuts resulted in the firing of
Speaker 2: FDA staffers who were tasks with reviewing Neuralink. That was
Speaker 2: actually reversed. Those those staffers were reinstated, according to reports.
Speaker 2: But I think chaos at the FDA is not great
Speaker 2: for any company in this kind of line of work.
Speaker 1: So, in other words, whereas some of his companies, terms
Speaker 1: of other companies might benefit from less regulation, this is
Speaker 1: a company that needs the FDA to say, hey, Neuralink,
Speaker 1: you are now allowed to do X or Y, and you.
Speaker 2: Can't do that unless you have FDA staffers to communicate with,
Speaker 2: to design your clinical studies with, to make sure that
Speaker 2: they're they're aligned with what the FDA wants to see
Speaker 2: in order to grant approval. I mean these companies, all
Speaker 2: the companies in the space are in very close constant
Speaker 2: contact with the FDA about what next steps to take
Speaker 2: to get to that milestone of commercial availability for their products,
Speaker 2: which might not happen for neuralink for years. So it's
Speaker 2: very important that the FDA is still in this communication
Speaker 2: with all these device startups. They also just were clear
Speaker 2: to start a trial in Canada, so it's not just
Speaker 2: a US related company anymore. And certainly a lot of
Speaker 2: biotech companies are working on international markets first before coming
Speaker 2: to the US because it just can be easier. But yeah,
Speaker 2: cuts of the FDA and also all of the cuts
Speaker 2: in research generally at universities, Academic research is very much
Speaker 2: a part of the building blocks for what comes next
Speaker 2: in AI and neural understanding what those brain impulses actually mean.
Speaker 2: All the research kind of builds on the foundation of
Speaker 2: what's been there before, and so the fact that a
Speaker 2: lot of federal funding for research in general has been
Speaker 2: cut or has not been given to academics without intense
Speaker 2: restrictions on things that have nothing to do with that research.
Speaker 2: That's not great for a company like Neuralink or anything
Speaker 2: in the biotech space.
Speaker 1: Got it, Sarah, thanks again.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Take care.
Speaker 1: This episode is produced by Stacy Wong. Anna mas Rakus
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