A Better Brain Chip Than Elon Musk’s?
With money from Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, scientist Tom Oxley’s startup has a less invasive device that could entice more patients than Elon Musk’s Neuralink.
Shortly after 2 a.m. on a Saturday in a midtown Manhattan sports bar packed with Aussies, Dr. Tom Oxley was feeling stunned. The underdog Brisbane Lions, his longtime favorite Australian rules football club, was up 73 to 27 against the Sydney Swans going into the second half of the championship match.
“It’s a good start,” Oxley acknowledged, clad in his typical game-day fit, a maroon, blue and yellow Lions jersey.
Most days and nights, Oxley, 44, is holed up in Brooklyn’s Navy Yards at the headquarters for Synchron, the brain chip startup he founded with backing from the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. But he stole away whenever he could in September to watch the Lions unexpectedly advance in the playoffs. In a later conversation, Oxley would liken his fandom for the Lions—which started when he attended games with his father—to a startup’s “scrappy bootstrap mentality.” He added: “It’s also quite Australian to relish the underdog.”
That’s a useful mentality for Oxley to carry back with him to Brooklyn. Within the burgeoning race to design and commercialize brain chip implants, Elon Musk’s Neuralink has the same status as the Sydney Swans do within Australian rules football: Both are attention-consuming favorites. And yet there’s Oxley and 12-year-old Synchron, which has raised about $145 million.