FULL TRANSCRIPT
Slava Rubin (00:09)
Thank you very much everybody for joining. This is the pre-IPO briefing series we like to have. We've been talking about lots of great companies already, whether it's Stripe or Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX. And today we're excited to be talking about Neuralink. I'm Slava Rubin, co-founder of Vincent, your gateway to all things alternative investments. And then we have with us Jan-Erik from Sacra
Today we're going to talk about Neuralink, the multi-billion dollar neurotechnology company by none other than Elon Musk. This is brought to you by Upmarket, our partner. So before we get into the conversation, I always have the compliance message I need to share, which is nothing in this presentation should be construed as an offer to sell securities or a solicitation of an offer to buy securities. All investments involve risk and a possibility of loss.
including loss of principle and neither past performance nor forward-looking information is a guarantee of future results. So with that, let's start with an overview of Neuralink from Jan-Erik. Take it away.
Jan-Erik Asplund (03:14)
Sweet yeah, so like you mentioned, this is another in the Elon Musk universe of companies and like many of other companies, it's a very ambitious idea. The core of it is developing implantable technology to allow you to have sort of brain computer interface in your head. So founded 2016, this large team of engineers and scientists who were the initial hires
and the company's been around now, yeah, about eight years. And they've done a few clinical trials that we'll talk about that show progress on this front.
They are roughly, I would say the leading player in this invasive BCI space, which has a few other companies we'll talk about. The sort of immediate proximate market for this is folks who have a neurological or physical inability to use sort of technology. So for example, there's about 180,000 quadriplegic patients who could use this kind of technology now, but there's a...
broader sort of medium term market for people with all kinds of, you know, injuries that affect their spinal cord or other disabilities. And then there's kind of a long-term TAM that we'll talk about that's a little bit more ambitious, which is the world where we all have a neurolink in our head.
And then to sort of look at their fundraising stats, which are very impressive. They've raised over 750 million and as of recently were valued at over 10 billion. And this is for what we should say is more or less pre-revenue company. So we'll talk about that more.
Sweet, was thought I think you're on mute there.
Slava Rubin (05:14)
Yeah, so that was a really fast overview. So we're talking about a crazy technology that's not really in market just yet from Elon Musk, obviously one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our day. But this is not a Tesla. You can't just go buy one and start driving. To be clear, we're talking about what people call BCI. So brain computer interface, where literally there's some sort of device slash a chip that's in your brain that's interacting with your brain.
to be able to accomplish something. Is that right, Your Honor?
Jan-Erik Asplund (05:47)
Yeah, exactly. There's a surgical process to get it in. So it's not something that's easy to install. And there's a lot of FDA clinical trial procedures around getting it. And for that reason, right now, it's in a very experimental medical phase.
Slava Rubin (06:06)
So can you give me, I know you briefly chatted about the neurological issues that somebody might have, but can you give me an example of a use case of who would use it and what would be the problem they would solve?
Jan-Erik Asplund (06:20)
Yeah, so let's say you have a spinal cord injury and you really can't move your arms or hands very well. So you use stuff like voice control, typically to control your computer. What would happen if this person was in a neurolink trial is that they would have the implant put into their brain. It detects their neural activity. So for example, if you think about moving your arms or hands, then as a
person without a spinal cord injury, your arms and hands move. But if you have a spinal cord injury, you still have the about what you want to do. So the Neuralink basically takes that neural activity, you thinking that you want to move your arms or hands, and then translates that into commands that control an external device. So for example, you could think, I want to move my cursor on the screen up, you know, to the right and click on this thing.
And then the Neuralink device would basically convert those thoughts into the action that you want it to take. So that's the sort of core idea.
Slava Rubin (07:29)
So a crazy question without maybe getting too geeky, how does it do that?
Jan-Erik Asplund (07:35)
Yeah, it is a pretty, it's very sophisticated engineering. think there's been a lot of work on kind of like understanding, first of all, like neural patterns, what's happening in the brain when you actually do decide to want to put a cursor up or move your arm up.
And there's a lot of very complex like machine learning involved in sort of taking the signals that are being generated in the brain and actually distilling that into the command because there's a lot of noise that's happening constantly in the brain. So a lot of it is this signals processing challenge and like a data, sort of data challenge. And that's sort of the first step, but then obviously there's all this kind of robotics stuff around it, but
That's been, think, the core challenge so far because they're not really into the world of having a robotic arm attached to you doing things. It's been mostly kind of a brain straight to a computer screen interface.
Slava Rubin (08:43)
So this company now is trading, I think you mentioned like around 10 billion, right? So it has to have had some sort of milestones or accomplishments beyond just saying, hey, let's create some chip that can go into people's brains to help manage this. What accomplishments or milestones have they actually already reached?
Jan-Erik Asplund (09:03)
Yeah, so there's been a few. mean, the sort of earliest one was an animal test, which there was some news stories about this, but they put the implant into a pig and they were recording its neural signals in real time. And they ended up releasing a video of later a monkey playing pong on a computer screen using a Neuralink implant. So that was the animal testing stage.
which got them the momentum to get FDA approval for human trials, which happened in 2023, mid 2023. And then the first quarter of last year is when they first got the implant into a human patient. And they got the human patient to be able to control the mouse and play games. end of last year, we started getting the stories about this one patient. I think his real name, as he gave his real name and allowed it to be used was Alex. He was able to play
Counter-Strike 2, he was able to do computer aided design using both the Neuralink implant in his brain and using for actual movement to use a joystick controlled through the mouth. So they've been progressing towards this and really last year is when the human trials picked up in terms of results.
Slava Rubin (10:24)
So to be clear, this is already in human trials. Not many, I believe. But they already have the device created and it's already been implanted in a person. Is it more than one person or just one person so far?
Jan-Erik Asplund (10:40)
I believe that there's two or three clinical trials ongoing and there's one that we have a lot of detail on. So yeah, but it's very long numbers.
Slava Rubin (10:48)
And but they're literally playing games like Counter-Strike, which is pretty sophisticated, and they're able to do it through the signal that's being caught by this device in the brain that was surgically implanted.
Jan-Erik Asplund (11:01)
Yeah,
I mean, I think it's something you have to kind of see. So I would go on YouTube and look up these videos, but it's kind of crazy because I think the early examples were interesting as proof of concept. know, a monkey could play pong, but that's moving a paddle up and down. It's not a very complex environment, whereas a fully 3D first-person shooter game that requires sort of quick reaction time, and there's lot going on on the screen.
and a much broader spectrum of movement. There's full XYZ axes. It's far more sophisticated than a 2D screen. So yeah, it's pretty remarkable.
Slava Rubin (11:38)
What more, because the science is so sophisticated, they probably can take hours to discuss and have debates about, but what more should we discuss as it relates to the science and the viability of this?
Jan-Erik Asplund (11:53)
Yeah, well, think that there's clearly some risks or issues that come along with it. There's these questions about how long can the electrodes function in the brain, right? Will they be rejected by the body's immune system? What are the long-term impacts of the materials that are being used? That kind of thing. There's also like the brain.
is not a static object. It moves slightly over time. Actually with the human trial last year, we know that there was a hiccup and the neurolink started to detach itself from his brain over time. And so they had to go back in and do some adjustments to the neurolink to make it actually stay attached. there's like many Elon Musk companies, there's a whole like
giant set of very challenging technical problems to solve, make this really something that can scale to thousands, tens of thousands of people. And a lot of those have to do with just, it's tricky to put something into the brain, have it stay there and work for months. If you want years and decades, it's even trickier.
Slava Rubin (13:16)
Got it. And how do you think about commercializing such a product?
Jan-Erik Asplund (13:24)
Yeah. So the interesting thing is, you know, commercially we have a kind of a, you know, a way to think about this that, that is somewhat straightforward because you have so many populations of people who go through the medical system and are diagnosed with, you know, paralysis due to spinal cord injury or ALS or stroke or other conditions like this. you have,
a large cohort of people who could be really good for this. And I think we also have some sense of what those markets are potentially worth, given what insurance pays to help those people regain function today. So there is really this sort of, I would say, series of markets that they can explore.
It's just a lot of it is about these trials working, proving that it's safe and especially the sort of long-term outcomes and making sure those work and working with the FDA. And so from there expanding from quadriplegic patients out to other categories.
Slava Rubin (14:43)
Would this be like a one-time sale for X dollars or is this like a SaaS model you predict?
Jan-Erik Asplund (14:49)
Yeah. So the thing I've seen looking at Neuralink and other BCI companies is that there's going to be this upfront component, which is basically you buying the hardware. But that's not necessarily it. I I think there's the potential for kind of recurring software revenue. And that's what we've seen people talk about is like, we're sort of recurring software maintenance fees.
And then there's gonna be probably a replacement cycle, some kind of upgrade cycle. And then I sort of analogize it to the iPhone. You buy an iPhone, you will buy services, you will buy apps, and then over time you'll probably replace it with a new one. So I think that's kind of how I'm thinking about the business model.
Slava Rubin (15:34)
Is there a medical device that's not exactly obviously Neuralink, but you know, that could be a comp as to how people can think about it. It's not as advanced as that, but, you know, that you can compare it to, try to wrap your head around what it would be like in a business world.
Jan-Erik Asplund (15:54)
Yeah, I think the closest one for me in the research, I mean, it's not a perfect comp, but I think these companies today that serve diabetics, you know, that do glucose monitoring, there's often a hardware component you buy upfront, and then there's sort of a recurring, you know, component of test strips. A lot of these newer employee insurance-based companies that do diabetic care, you know, there's an ongoing coaching component.
or some kind of SaaS that you're plugging into to get your metrics and to get recipe ideas. So I think we're seeing this a lot in health tech, where there is some kind of upfront hardware and then a recurring service that takes kind of over the role of like a doctor. I mean, not fully, but some kind of overtime consultation. And I think that'll be necessary with Neuralink too.
Slava Rubin (16:49)
That's a great proxy. kind of like in the diabetics world with the CGM, the continuous glucose monitors and all the things, the peripherals around that, that's really helpful. Speaking of that, what do you think of the market and the competition for this?
Jan-Erik Asplund (17:05)
Yeah, I definitely think that there's a good chance that we'll see there's kind of an invasive, you know, the invasive high bandwidth category of something like Neuralink will be potentially separate from, you know, other types of less invasive ones. I think you have a bunch of companies that are doing this. there's Synchron, BlackRock, Neurotech, Paradronix. Those are sort of the most closely competitive.
with Neuralink. then I think over time right now, I don't think that technology is really there, but we'll probably see non-invasive forms of this emerge as well. So you can imagine a wearable, which is basically something that augments you maybe just as a healthy person in certain ways, without necessarily needing to be injected into your brain.
Yeah, so I think we'll probably have also at the invasive end, there might be some segmentation in terms of maybe certain devices are used by certain kinds of patients. you have patients who can't get brain surgery might have a different kind of less invasive option. I think, yeah.
Slava Rubin (18:29)
And when you're saying the word invasive, just to be clear, it's literally a surgeon opening up your head and putting this device somewhere near your brain, right?
Jan-Erik Asplund (18:39)
But
yeah, exactly. A surgeon or as their sort of Neuralink, has made hay of their ambition to have this done by robot surgeons. So that would be sort of the alternative.
Slava Rubin (18:54)
Wow, okay. And from your understanding, where is Neuralink on their momentum of this product versus their competition? Are they way ahead? Are they way behind? Are they somewhere in the middle? What's your thoughts on that?
Jan-Erik Asplund (19:12)
Yeah, so there's been, I mean, there are a bunch of these companies out there now and they all started, you know, roughly the same time. There's a few that were before. So Synchron is one of the big names. They've done clinical trials with, I believe, 10 patients. So, you know, they're slightly ahead in the sense that 10 is larger than three. There's a company
BlackRock, which has been around since, actually they've been around since 2008. And so they're a little bit, you know, technically again, further ahead. thing is that Neuralink has sort of, you know, captured all the, captured all the attention, all the buzz. I think they've made a lot of the, you know, very public advancements that people are actually talking about. And so I think that gives them big advantages in terms of, you know, sort of like the momentum.
PR and also talent acquisition. But there are other companies that have been sort of doing similar stuff.
Slava Rubin (20:15)
You have any sense for the value of Synchron or Blackrock just as enterprise value?
Jan-Erik Asplund (20:22)
Yeah, it's hard to say with a lot of these companies. Synchron last I saw was worth maybe like 400 million in their series C. was like 2000, that was in 2022.
Slava Rubin (20:35)
So 400 million as perspective, we're talking about a neurolink at like 10 billion, right?
Jan-Erik Asplund (20:40)
Yeah, exactly.
Slava Rubin (20:42)
And but specifically Neuralink was last valued at what price? The actual value.
Jan-Erik Asplund (20:49)
Yeah, last primary round.
Slava Rubin (20:53)
Was it like two?
Jan-Erik Asplund (20:53)
Yeah, it was like 3.3.45 in the series D.
Slava Rubin (21:00)
Got it, 3.5 billion. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because potentially, as you say, 10 is more than three is synchronic further ahead, but Neuralink is just valued so much more. So we'll go there in terms of what's the right price and all that in just a second. What do you see as the next big accomplishment or unlock for Neuralink in terms of value?
Jan-Erik Asplund (21:27)
Yeah, I think the next big unlock is basically get this into more patients. over the next, especially now that they've done it with a few, over the next one to two years, you need to get this into more patients. And you also need to show that the existing patients are still doing fine. And there hasn't been, know, maybe they have to come in for an adjustment, but there can't be serious issues with the implants working. And then
you know, think eventually you get to the point that you can do a larger clinical trial with more people and then get a sort of, you know, FDA approval to move into marketing the device for certain medical conditions, which they don't have yet. yeah, I mean, that's basically it. You'll get this in the more patients, make sure it's working well and get towards that FDA approval for marketing so that you can scale it up.
Slava Rubin (22:24)
So you've mentioned invasive or non-invasive. So is there potential that Elon Musk has it all wrong with the invasive and really we're gonna skip that and we're gonna go from landlines right to wireless. So we're gonna go straight to non-invasive and skip the need for invasive or is that not really realistic or can this invasive approach become non-invasive? So if you're betting on this you might be getting the non-invasive benefits as well.
Any thoughts on that? Because do I have to make a bet on invasive versus non-invasive by picking Neuralink?
Jan-Erik Asplund (22:58)
Yeah, I think non-invasive, there's a lot of benefits. They're much cheaper, obviously. There's no surgery involved, completely reversible. And I would say 99 % safe. And so there's definitely a chance. I think the idea that we're going to just skip from landlines to wireless potentially, mean, there's like,
I think there's a lot of value in being in the brain for getting the super high bandwidth and fine-grained control. So that's how this guy, for example, is able to make millimeter adjustments while aiming down the scope in a video game is because they have that fine-grained access. But it seems like generally the scientific view on this is that you need to be
embedded in the brain to be able to capture things with such a fine-grained resolution as to be helpful to folks with serious disabilities as a result of a spinal cord injury. But I would also say, I think if it turns out that we can actually access the same brain signals from outside the brain with a wearable, I would think that Neuralink would be really well positioned to
ride that wave given how much work they're sort of doing on that front.
Slava Rubin (24:26)
Got it. So give me perspective on, know, is this like an expectation that Neuralink is commercially a big company next year or is it 10 years out? Give me some timeline perspective. And then I would love to hear your kind of scenario analysis of, you know, projections, your bull bear case, you know, what's your thoughts on that?
Jan-Erik Asplund (24:53)
Yeah, think there's probably a world where I think the ambitious case is that they are basically having successful trials ongoing in the next few years and they get medical, you know, sort of they get approval from the FDA to market this as a medical device in the next three years. And then they can start rolling it out to medical patients who have different conditions. I think
I think from there, it's basically, they expand into all these conditions? Does it successfully sell into all these use cases? And how quickly does it expand? So in the bull case, I think this is the standout product for how folks with disabilities manage to work with a computer.
in the short term or work with other types of physical interfaces. And they end up with kind of the monopoly position and a huge portion of this massive market. So the bull case is kind of like 15 billion in revenue from all of these different conditions by 2035 and probably started to get into some of the more ambitious use cases that a healthy human with no injuries might want to use it for.
Base case is kind of a, our base case is basically based on the idea that brain computer interfaces do pan out and this does become used, but that it's still a small market. Maybe trials don't go as smoothly as in the bull case. There's still issues and they're still figuring this all out in the future, which is, mean, kind of personally where I land because I think
It just seems very challenging to make this actually sort of work and be production ready. The bear case is that these challenges are basically insurmountable and that it might become used for very niche conditions and would remain kind of sub one billion.
Slava Rubin (27:13)
sub one billion of revenue.
Jan-Erik Asplund (27:15)
Yeah, exactly.
Slava Rubin (27:17)
So it's interesting. You have these multiples. If everybody can see the chart. So in the bear case, you know, they're doing 300 million dollars of revenue in 2035, which is a decade from now. And it's only worth one point two billion, which if you bought it today at 10 billion, that's obviously pretty bad. Right. And your base case is they're doing five billion of revenue, which today is obviously zero. So five billion is significant. Ten years from now. And I would say that's
you know, pretty rapid growth from zero to $5 billion of revenue 10 years out. And you're putting a 10x multiple on that. So that's a $50 billion enterprise value, which, you know, is a solid return, but, you know, obviously a lot of risk. And your bull case here is you have $15 billion of revenue. Give me some perspective before we talk about the value there. How many patients directionally are we talking about? Like, what's your assumption in terms of how much they're
paying there to get that 15 or you just hopped down and get.
Jan-Erik Asplund (28:22)
Yeah, hundreds of thousands. that would be beyond the sort of 180k of folks who are quadriplegics and well into the much larger market, multiple millions of folks with strokes, et cetera. So 2 million, 3 million.
Slava Rubin (28:43)
So there'd be hundreds of thousands, if not a few million people who have had surgery, let's call it plus minus 1 % of society, I'm simplifying there, who have had this device put into their head. And now this company is growing rapidly, solving a lot of people's problems and potentially deserves a 15x multiple and is now worth, let's call it a couple hundred billion dollars. Is that fair?
Jan-Erik Asplund (29:12)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Slava Rubin (29:15)
I mean, that is obviously the bull case. mean, that seems aggressive from here today, but I imagine most people would think the same way about SpaceX 10 years ago, right?
Jan-Erik Asplund (29:28)
Yeah, and I think it's even harder because rockets, have an established kind of product market fit with NASA and other space programs, but with Neuralink, it's more of a zero to one, you know, if it works, it has a massive market that hasn't been addressed by any other technology. It's just a matter of getting to, you know, that not insignificant question of can this actually work long-term for anyone?
But if it does, then I think it's even sort of a bigger delta than with rockets, because rockets, we know how they work before.
Slava Rubin (30:05)
So there's a big range between 1.2 billion and 180 billion. And to get to that level of scale, there's a number of risks, challenges, ethical things to overcome. Can you kind of navigate us through that, which is, if it's going to reach this level of growth, what kind of major challenges do they need to overcome?
Jan-Erik Asplund (30:30)
Yeah, so we've already had regulators look at Neuralink and scrutinize it very closely, delayed human trials. So you know.
Slava Rubin (30:44)
If we could just get the slide up, that'd be great on the challenges.
Jan-Erik Asplund (30:49)
So Elon's company is obviously no strangers to this kind of scrutiny. think probably getting past the FDA, proving that it's safe, it's going to be a years long process. And that's probably the most likely point of failure. They just can't make this work and work safely long-term. I mean, we could even see it seemed to work for a few years and then
you have catastrophic failure in patients who have had it for years and that could be a huge problem. So I think that's the biggest one. I mean, there are also, there are broader sort of ethical questions that come up a lot. The vulnerability to hacking is one. I mean, obviously if you have a computer chip in your brain, I'm not really too sure how plausible it is, but this comes up, this idea that you have to protect your sort of brain
for misuse. There's public acceptance. mean, there's an ethical kind of dilemma for a lot of people about injecting a chip from Elon Musk's company into their brain. I think that's probably less significant because over time, I think the window on these things gets shifted as it proves to be worthwhile. yeah, think making sure the safety record is really on point is probably the biggest sort of existential risk or challenge for them.
Slava Rubin (32:17)
Sure, but your point about hacking the brain, I know this almost sounds like a silly question, but given the fact that quote unquote almost everything gets hacked, how do we stop that?
Jan-Erik Asplund (32:28)
Yeah, exactly. think it's like there is going to be neural data produced to take the, you know, pro this is the problem side. And if there's neural data being produced on a chip in your brain, then that neural data could be accessed. mean, that's just, yeah, that's just the reality of data. And so I'm not sure how you cyber, how you sort of enforce cybersecurity exactly on an implant.
I guess in a sense it could be air gapped from the internet. So maybe there's no way to actually access from outside unless you're sort of in the system. But yeah, I don't think that they have necessarily thought too much about it because they're still early, but I'm sure that will be a problem.
Slava Rubin (33:18)
Okay, as a reminder for those that are listening, feel free to use the Q &A section to ask any questions. Many of you have already been asking, so I've been incorporating it. Let's dive into what people probably care most on this series, which is investment and the price. So I believe the last price we mentioned was, it was like a $3.5 billion enterprise value. But it's now trading at around a $10 billion enterprise value.
So let's just start with a very high level question, which is, is this a good investment at this price? Is it overvalued?
Jan-Erik Asplund (33:58)
Yeah, it's really hard to say because again, like we talked about SpaceX, which is probably more moored to reality. And we were talking about Tesla for this call, which has been a company that is valuation has been, you know, very hard to understand for a long time in the public markets. I think here in this graph, you see Neuralink over the course of 2024, when these first human trials were happening, the price going from
you roughly that $30 mark, which is already 50 % higher than the last primary round to now where it's at at 56. So like almost 3X the previous valuation, like we said, 10 billion. I think the question of whether it's overpriced, mean, relative to every other brain computer interface company or medical device company, yes, it's quite overpriced.
But at the same time, people are betting on it because it's an Elon Musk company. It's an Elon Musk company and he's proven various other times with various other companies capable of solving these intractable technical problems and then turning around and turning the solution into a way to generate profits and then feed those back into creating a competitive advantage, creating a moat.
He did it with SpaceX, with Tesla. They're sort of trying to do it with XAI. And I think a lot of the price increase is related to people sort of betting on that happening again with Neuralink. This is another space where there are these huge technical challenges and a lot of sort of authoritative voices who say this is impossible. And
So think we saw a lot of this price action happen in response to them proving, hey, we can put this in a human being and they can do things that people didn't really think was possible before. So there's a lot of this Elon premium and there's a lot of excitement about those human trials. And I think the question of whether it's overpriced ultimately just comes down to, do you believe that Elon kind of has that
that ability to hire and organize and manage a team of people to do something kind of insane.
Slava Rubin (36:29)
If I was trying to build up some comps, what organizations would you think of, whether they're public market or even private, you know, that you would think of to try to help come towards the appropriate price for Neuralink? Because obviously in biotech, there are concepts of, you know, totally betting on this big idea in the future that would get approval, whether it's a drug or others. So this isn't completely novel, right? And sometimes those are already in the public markets and valued.
Do you have any perspective on how to think about some comps here?
Jan-Erik Asplund (37:04)
Yeah, definitely. So I think you make a good point that a lot of very speculative valuation multiples can be found in companies that are doing drug discovery. Then again, a lot of those have a very accelerated timeline where you either find out in a year or two whether it's going to work. So those at least demonstrate the binary value of
the company and how that might affect evaluation. I pulled in a few other medical device makers here. So Neuronetics is a company that's doing a non-invasive treatment for certain psychiatric disorders, and it's based on neuromodulation. So it's fully non-invasive. It sits outside your head, but it sort of does trans-cranial magnetic stimulation. And they are multiple.
trade, sorry, valued at roughly 2.3X doing 75 million in revenue. have few, ClearPoint Neuro is a similar one, but they're valued much higher. There's a little bit more of a, they are growing a little bit faster and they have a few more sort of products in the pipeline. And they're sort of the outlier. Otherwise you sort of see this three to nine X range as far as revenue multiples.
for companies like this. And I mean, it's hard to say as far as Neuralink. Now, first of all, we don't really have revenue for them and it's unclear. It's likely that they don't really have revenue. But secondly, Neuralink's mission, what they're going after is so much bigger than, you know, sort of a non-invasive potentially useful treatment for a psychiatric disorder. You know, they're sort of going for a much bigger market. And so I think that's why they're
valuation is so much higher, the multiple is so much higher.
Slava Rubin (39:04)
And when was our last investment round? Was it 2022, you said?
Jan-Erik Asplund (39:09)
2023, end of 2023, or sorry, middle of 2023 was the series D.
Slava Rubin (39:16)
And before that, do you know the round, when was that?
Jan-Erik Asplund (39:19)
Yeah, the C was in 2021, two billion.
Slava Rubin (39:23)
So it might not be crazy to predict, and obviously this is not investment advice at all, but maybe they'll raise it around in 25 if it's like every couple years sort of thing.
Jan-Erik Asplund (39:35)
Yeah, I think it's possible. Definitely, especially as they ramp up, assuming they ramp up human trials and start to manufacture more of these. And yeah, I could see that happening.
Slava Rubin (39:48)
In your opinion, what's the actual IPO prospects? mean, obviously, it sounds like the revenue prospects are far out. But do you think they might IPO soon or is that irrelevant? And this is really just an investment in the private markets and potential to make a lot of money while it's still private.
Jan-Erik Asplund (40:08)
Yeah, I think there's definitely this sort of private, you're seeing the private share price go up. There's a lot of demand. I think if you're a Neuralink employee, it's really hard to sell shares. So there's a lot of demand and it would make sense to me to think that in the private markets, price will continue to go up. But I do think overall, it's kind of like a very long-term, this is something to take a flyer on if you...
One, if you understand the science and know the science and believe in it. Two, if you just believe in sort of Elon's organizations able to overcome these challenges. Emphasize on long-term because in the next one to two years, there's no way that they would go public. Elon hates going public more or less, and also there's really no revenue. I think three to five years, you could start to see a compelling story that
that one might tell to the public markets. But I think if it's gonna go public, it's probably well into the 2030s.
Slava Rubin (41:18)
Got it. So you would have to go through the private markets and several of you have been asking about how to get into the private markets, which is a great opportunity to mention our partner here, which is Upmarket. You know, this briefing is brought to you by them. They're our partner and they give you access for everyday investors to get into IPO companies, pre IPO companies like this and other alternate investment opportunities. So we want to thank Upmarket for partnering with us and we're actually going to share a link with you all so you can get, you know, take a look at that company as well.
So Jan-Erik, are you an investor? Are you thinking to invest in Neuralink?
Jan-Erik Asplund (41:54)
Neuralink? I don't know. Neuralink? I really look forward to, you know, on the human side, having access to one because I think that while obviously it's incredibly exciting to restore, you know, lost motor function to folks who have had strokes, I think for me personally, I'm really excited about everything else that this could do. So if I do think that I believe in it, you know,
I would invest, the idea of improving your memory, that's something they've talked about, being able to turn on night vision, I don't know, by thinking about it and being able to see in the dark. I don't know if I could get chat GPT implanted right into, or XAI as it may be, implanted into my brain to ask questions with my thoughts. I think like the...
the vision of it as a tool for everyone is to me really exciting. So yeah, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about it for sure. And after watching that video of the guy playing Counter-Strike, that kind of got me really excited. So yeah, just on a personal note.
Slava Rubin (43:10)
Just putting your investor lens on, what do you think the price is going to be three years from now? If today it's trading at 10 billion, what do you think the price is in February 28?
Jan-Erik Asplund (43:24)
Three years from now. Yeah, I would say, mean, it's like, what's the market price? What's the comp price based on revenue versus I think in reality, we're going to be talking about a private markets valuation in three years. And I think it could be, you know, roughly, assuming trials go well, they continue making progress at the rate they have, I think 30 billion is kind of what I might, you know, I might expect to see at that point.
Slava Rubin (43:54)
Yeah, I my opinion is very high risk, high reward. I do think it's significantly inflated on price because of the Elon bump and obviously the Trump bump in parallel with that. I don't think 10 billion is cheap in any way, or form for the accomplishments they've made since you could get, like you mentioned, similar type companies for much less. But Elon has shown a history over and over to out execute most others and accomplish incredible things.
If we close our eyes, I do think, you know, 15 years from now that this company could be worth a lot, a lot, a lot. Now on the flip side, it might not work out and not be worth that much in the long run. But if you're just trying to make money, there is an opportunity just to keep on trying to trade the Elon Musk trade and the Trump bump to try to make money in the next.
four years, especially while he's connected to the president. So I do think this is a very interesting investment. I do think there's a lot of risk. I do think from society perspective, Neuralink could be amazing and scary at the same time. But this is kind of the right in the strike zone of an Elon Musk company. So it could totally be huge. I wouldn't bet against him. That'd be hard to do.
but definitely go in with caution if you're interested to invest. Anything else you wanna mention, Yonair?
Jan-Erik Asplund (45:24)
Yeah, think, you for me personally, I always thought Neuralink was kind of like not as high profile or not as high interest to Elon as as his other company. It always seemed like there was more momentum and more progress going on with him and Tesla and SpaceX. But I think last year was really for me, at least the moment where I sort of started taking notice big time of what they were doing with the clinical trial and the amazing sort of results.
So I think it'll be an interesting one to watch for the next few years, especially if Elon is sort of the shadow president in control of the FDA. It could be interesting to see. So yeah, one to watch.
Slava Rubin (46:02)
All right, great. We've had a really robust conversation. Thank you, Jan-Erik from Sacra. I'm Slava Rubin. You can check out with withvincent.com. This has been the Neuralink Conversation. And for those that are interested, we will have this archive. So you will be able to hear it there as well. Thank you so much.
Jan-Erik Asplund (46:19)
Great. Thanks, Slava
