OpenAI Invests in Cancer-Detecting Brain Implant Startup
OpenAI is backing Coherence Neuro’s $45 million round as the startup develops brain implants aimed at detecting and treating cancer.
OpenAI’s venture arm and Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund are investing in Coherence Neuro, a startup developing brain implants intended to detect and eventually treat cancer, according to WIRED.1
The investment forms part of a $45 million seed round for Coherence, which is working on brain-computer-interface technology aimed at reading electrical signals associated with brain tumours. The company says its longer-term goal is a device that could identify whether a tumour is growing, shrinking or returning, then provide electrical stimulation as a treatment.1
What the company is developing
Coherence is not presenting the implant as a finished cancer treatment. WIRED reports that the startup has carried out an initial recording test involving three people already undergoing brain-tumour surgery at Melbourne’s Royal Melbourne Hospital. The implant was left in place for roughly 30 minutes before removal, providing an early safety check rather than evidence of a proven therapy.1
The company is now testing recording and stimulation capabilities in seven additional patients, with plans for a longer-term clinical trial involving people with glioblastoma. That work will need to establish whether signals recorded from human tumours can reliably support detection, monitoring or treatment decisions.1
Why OpenAI is involved
Coherence’s cofounder and CEO Ben Woodington told WIRED that AI could help process the huge datasets produced by brain-computer interfaces. OpenAI Startup Fund partner Ian Hathaway described the cancer-therapy approach as innovative, while Woodington said OpenAI would not receive access to the startup’s brain or health data under the investment arrangements.1
The deal follows OpenAI’s earlier investment in Merge Labs, another brain-computer-interface company. The two investments are not the same project, but they show how AI companies are increasingly backing technology that turns neural signals into data that software can analyse.1
Our opinion
The interesting part of this deal is not the futuristic pitch; it is the gap between a promising research direction and a clinically useful treatment. Coherence has reported an early human recording test and a larger research programme, but that is a long way from proving that an implant can safely detect a tumour’s behaviour or stop it growing. OpenAI’s involvement may accelerate the data analysis, yet the medical evidence — and the privacy rules around it — will matter more than the investor headline.