If you could safely implant a chip in your brain to enhance your intelligence, would you?
Some of Silicon Valley¡¯s most powerful technologists want that future, including Elon Musk, who recently said he would ramp up production of his Neuralink brain chips this year as part of a noble effort to ensure humans can keep pace with superintelligent AI systems that might one day go awry.
Fellow billionaire Alexandr Wang, who is leading Meta Platforms¡¯ program to build such systems (the good kind) wants to delay having kids until Neuralink or similar tech can augment their intelligence, capitalizing on the neuroplasticity of their developing brains. A venture capitalist once told me the true advantage of AI would come when you could plug it directly into your mind, making you the smartest person in the room.
This pattern should feel familiar. Silicon Valley has invested trillions in building artificial general intelligence, despite no consensus on what AGI even means (and companies are now quietly backing away from the term). A similar dynamic is emerging with brain-computer interfaces: grandiose visions built on conviction rather than strong evidence.
Neuralink¡¯s head surgeon Matthew MacDougall, for instance, told the Andrew Huberman podcast that pharmacological agents like LSD and psilocybin are more promising for plasticity research than electrodes-based chips, and that ¡°you¡¯re never going to get that broad targetability with any electrodes that I can see coming in our lifetimes.¡± Notwithstanding the obvious ethical problem of permanently ¡°boosting¡± the brain of a child who can¡¯t give consent, MacDougall suggests that Wang may be planning a family around capabilities that don¡¯t work as imagined.
But the enhancement dreams are not entirely fanciful when you look at how much the brain tech industry has grown. Global venture capital investment in neurotechnology, which includes brain-computer interfaces and neurostimulation devices, rose to $2.3 billion in 2025 from $293 million a decade earlier, according to market intelligence firm Pitchbook. The number of players in the field has grown sixfold, says Marcello Ienca, a professor of AI ethics and neuroscience at Technical University Munich, with most large technology companies investing in neurotechnology.
Like other forms of technology that initially targeted people with disabilities then went mainstream ¡ª including the mouse and text-to-speech software ¡ª neurotech is also expanding from treating clinical issues like paralysis to enhancing the lives of people who are fit and well. Meta¡¯s neural wristband can read electrical signals from muscles to control devices, while Apple has been awarded a patent for AirPods that can monitor brain activity and Bryan Johnson¡¯s Kernel has developed a $50,000 helmet for brain monitoring.
Outlandish as they sound, Wang and Musk¡¯s ideas are technically plausible. Ienca points to studies that...
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