• Elon Musk said that Neuralink, his brain chip company, is launching a clinical trial in the UAE.
• The announcement follows news that Starlink, his satellite internet company, is coming to Saudi Arabia.
• Neuralink announced the clinical trial just one day before Trump arrived in the UAE.

Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain-computer interface company, is launching a clinical trial in the UAE — and the announcement came just one day before President Donald Trump arrived in the country.

The company said on Wednesday that it's partnering with the Cleveland Clinic for a clinical trial in Abu Dhabi, its first outside of the US. Called UAE-Prime, the clinical trial will focus on how individuals with motor and speech impairment "can use thought to control devices & communicate," according to a post on X.

Just one day prior, Musk announced that Starlink, his satellite internet company that's a part of SpaceX, had been approved for maritime and aviation use in Saudi Arabia.

Both of the companies' Middle East expansions coincided with Trump's multi-day tour to the Gulf. A number of key business and tech leaders traveled to the region as well. Trump has largely focused on deal-making throughout the trip, previously saying he wants to secure $1 trillion worth of investments.

Representatives for Neuralink and Musk did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

• The first nonverbal recipient of Elon Musk's Neuralink brain chip has shared a video of how he uses it.
• Brad Smith, who has ALS, used Neuralink's brain-computer interface to edit the video.
• A synthetic version of his voice, made with AI and old recordings, allowed him to narrate the video.

The first nonverbal Neuralink patient to receive the chip implant is offering a glimpse into how he uses the technology — editing and narrating a YouTube video using signals from his brain.

Brad Smith is the third person in the world to get a brain chip implant with Elon Musk's Neuralink, and the first person with ALS to do so.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that primarily affects motor neurons — the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord responsible for controlling voluntary muscle movement. Over time, patients lose voluntary control of muscle movements, affecting their ability to speak, eat, move, and breathe independently.

Smith posted a video on YouTube last week showing how he uses his brain implant in day-to-day life.

He explained how the brain-computer interface (BCI) lets him use brain signals to control the mouse on his MacBook Pro to edit the video, which he said is the first edited with Neuralink or a BCI.

The implant, placed in his motor cortex, is roughly the size of five stacked quarters and contains more than 1,000 electrodes. Smith said that Neuralink doesn't read a constant stream of his thoughts but rather interprets brain signals indicating how and where he wants to move the cursor. While he initially tried imagining moving his hand to control the cursor, it ultimately proved more effective for him to think about moving his tongue and clenching his jaw to control the cursor and virtually click the mouse.

AI was also used on recordings of Smith from before he lost his ability to speak to create a synthetic version of his voice, allowing him to effectively narrate the video in his own voice.

In a separate video from reporter and Musk biographer Ashlee Vance, Musk phoned Smith during a visit from Neuralink's team to Smith's home.

"I hope this is a game changer for you and your family," Musk said.

"I'm excited to get this in my head and stop using eye-gaze," Smith said through his computer. Smith said in his video last week that he'd been using eye-gaze technology to communicate, but that the technology was limited to dark rooms. Neuralink's implant, he said, lets him communicate outdoors and in varying lighting.

The Neuralink implant also allows Smith to play video games with his kids, with footage showing him playing "Mario Kart."

"It took years to get here, and I still break down and cry," Smith told Vance for his Substack publication Core Memory. "It is really nice to have a purpose greater than me. I am really excited to serve others in the future with this work."

BI has reached out to Smith for additional comment.

Neuralink, which was previously tested on monkeys, implanted its device in a human for the first time in January 2024. Noland Arbaugh, a quadriplegic who became the company's first human patient, previously told BI the implant has helped him regain independence and control in his life and make new social connections.

Neuroscientists are striving to give a voice to people unable to speak in a fast-advancing quest to harness brainwaves to restore or enhance physical abilities.

Researchers at universities across California and companies, such as New York-based Precision Neuroscience, are among those making headway toward generating naturalistic speech through a combination of brain implants and artificial intelligence.

Investment and attention have long been focused on implants that enable severely disabled people to operate computer keyboards, control robotic arms, or regain some use of their own paralyzed limbs. But some labs are making strides by concentrating on technology that converts thought patterns into speech.

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Away from the headlines about his eye-watering wealth, DOGE cuts, and dreams of colonizing Mars, Elon Musk's footprint across the US and the wider world has been steadily expanding. We use maps and satellite imagery to track the exponential growth of the Elon empire from his Starbase close to the Mexican border to his vast new Starlink and Boring Company development in Texas.

• The rise of AI agents could upend how the internet works.
• The technology has the potential to disrupt Big Tech relationships with consumers.
• AI agents could change consuming content, organizing daily tasks, and making decisions.

In the future, you might not read this column on Business Insider's website or app. Instead, your very own AI agent could read it to you as part of a bespoke smorgasbord of daily content, suggestions, decisions, and actions that make your life easier and more organized.

Silicon Valley is all aquiver about this agentic vision as the third year of the generative AI boom gains momentum.

2025 has been hailed as the year of AI agents—personalized digital assistants that can interact with users, do research, gather information, curate content, and ultimately anticipate your needs and get things done before you even ask.

As usual with techno-futurist predictions, this may not come to pass. Generative AI might not progress as quickly as hoped. However, if the technology becomes capable of such feats, it will upend the internet and could disrupt some of the companies that dominate our current digital world.

"There's an idea we can't seem to shake," Bernstein's Mark Shmulik and Nikhil Devnani, two of the top internet analysts, wrote in a recent note to investors. "If AI agents truly become useful, the internet will go dark."

Websites and apps won't go away; it's just that for many of them, consumers won't visit or see these digital locations directly. Instead, they will access information, content, and widgets through an AI assistant that becomes "the aggregator of the aggregators," the analysts said.

"If it scales and plays out like we think it might, this. Changes. Everything. The aggregators get disaggregated, and much of consumer internet may be structural shorts. Welcome to the Agentic AI era," they wrote. "There's nowhere to hide."

Traveling could become easier

The Bernstein analysts cited an example of flying to New York and needing to get from the airport to the office.

Do you really care whether you take an Uber, a Lyft, a Waymo, a cab, or a generic black car service? Probably not. What you really want is the fastest, cheapest, most comfortable ride into Manhattan.

What if your personal AI agent could sort this whole thing out for you? That would radically change the way the internet works. No need to "Google" anything. You might not even need to take out your smartphone (if we even have phones in this agentic future).  

"The aggregators have control over the supply, but if demand consolidates and gets fulfilled through an AI agent, you may never need to open your rideshare app again!" the Bernstein analysts wrote. 

A new top-of-the-funnel

This could be the ultimate top of the funnel. An AI agent representing each of us would become a powerful new direct connection that tech companies could forge with consumers. All other providers would be funneled through this new digital gate and would likely have to pay some sort of toll—just as Google collects tolls right now on the web through Search ads and Apple collects tolls via App Store fees.

"If you extrapolate these dynamics to their end state, AI Agents could truly disintermediate the aggregators by becoming pseudo marketplaces in their own right," Shmulik wrote. 

Big Tech companies and startups are already furiously jostling for control of this future agentic funnel. 

In late January, OpenAI unveiled Operator, an AI agent system that uses a web browser to take action on behalf of users, such as booking travel reservations and buying them products.

Users can select a specific website through which they want to process their requests, such as OpenTable, or send the request through a search engine like Google. The key here is that the direct relationship is between the OpenAI agent and the user. Previously, this online journey would probably have started with a Google Search. Now, in the future, Google is just one of many services that OpenAI's Operator might choose.

Google is not waiting around to become just another app on someone else's AI agent platform, though. In December, the company showed off Project Mariner, an AI agent that can browse the web and take actions such as clicking buttons and filling out forms. 

Back in October, OpenAI rival Anthropic unveiled a similar tool rolled out as a test feature called "computer use," which enables its AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, to use a computer similarly to humans.

Some Anthropic engineers asked to order enough food to feed a group, and this new AI agent tool selected pizza. Alex Albert, Anthropic's head of developer relations, said the tool navigated DoorDash online, and "about a minute later, we saw Claude decided to order us some pizzas." On Monday, Anthropic launched an updated model, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, with "extended thinking" capabilities.

Other tech companies, including AI startup Perplexity, have similar offerings.

These AI agents may be delivered via new, voice-based devices. Meta has wearable technology such as its goggles and smart glasses. Apple has put its brand of AI on many of its devices and is working on updates to the Vision Pro goggles. Google is busy baking its Gemini AI models into millions of Android phones and Chromebooks.

An even more unbreakable digital connection?

Is this the ultimate top-of-the-funnel technology? Maybe not.

Elon Musk's Neuralink aims to put chips inside humans' brains. That could create an unbreakable bond with consumers, as the chip would read their thoughts, desires, and needs directly from their heads rather than inferring what people want from Google Searches, Apple app behavior, and social media posts.

This might sound like wild sci-fi dreams, though Google executives have talked about this idea for years.  

In 2010, Hal Varian, Google's chief economist, discussed it with The Atlantic, saying a brain implant could be a logical next step for the company's search engine. 

"Now you Google things on your computer. And you Google things on your phone. That's the next stage. And I believe — people may laugh — but I think there will be an implant," he said. 

• Elon Musk has had a big year with Tesla and SpaceX soaring in value, supercharging his net worth.
• He helped Donald Trump win reelection and intends to transform the US government in 2025.
• Scroll down for seven charts showing how Musk's 2024 played out.

Elon Musk has had a year for the record books.

His businesses have taken off, with Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, and Neuralink all touching new valuation highs. Their success has boosted Musk's net worth to above $450 billion for the first time, putting him over $200 billion ahead of the world's second-richest person, Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

Musk has also become a power player in US politics after wielding his cash and clout to help win Donald Trump a second term in office. As one of the president-elect's closest advisors, he's now gearing up to overhaul the US government.

The situation seems worse at X, formerly Twitter, after Musk's $44 billion takeover and reshaping of the platform sparked an advertiser exodus.

Take a look at Musk's 2024 in charts (all data is accurate as of Friday, December 20):

1. Charging ahead

Tesla shares have shot up as much as 85% this year, driving the electric vehicle maker's market value above $1.4 trillion for the first time. They've since retreated but continue to trade near record levels.

The automaker has benefited from market buzz around artificial intelligence — which it's harnessing to develop self-driving cars and humanoid robots — plus a robust US economy and the Federal Reserve cutting interest rates.

Investors are also betting that Musk's businesses will benefit from his close ties to Trump, which could translate into less stringent regulations, government subsidies, tariff exemptions, and more.

2. Reaching for the stars

SpaceX's valuation nearly doubled from $180 billion at the end of last year to $350 billion this month, based on the price paid by the company and its backers for employee shares in its latest tender offer.

Musk's rocket, spacecraft, and satellite communications company made several technological breakthroughs this year. For example, it plucked the first-stage booster of its new Starship out of the air using a massive pair of mechanical "chopsticks" in October.

3. Shifting fortunes

Musk's net worth slumped in the spring as Tesla stock tumbled, dropping below $170 billion at its nadir.

But it rebounded by over $300 billion to touch an unprecedented $486 billion on December 17, as Tesla hit fresh highs and SpaceX notched a $350 billion valuation.

4. Rise of the robots

Musk's artificial intelligence company, xAI, was only founded in July 2023.

Yet it notched a post-money valuation of $24 billion in May following its Series B funding round. That rose to $50 billion in November, reports say, meaning the maker of the Grok chatbot is worth roughly as much as Monster Beverage.

5. X marks the drop

It remains tricky to gauge the health of X, the social media company formerly known as Twitter that Musk took private in 2022. One way is to use Fidelity's monthly estimates of the value of its stake in the business.

The mutual fund giant's figures imply that X's valuation has crashed since Musk's purchase. The tech billionaire laid off a large part of the company's workforce and relaxed content moderation in support of greater free speech, triggering an advertiser exodus that hammered the company's revenues.

Regardless, Musk recently posted on X that the platform has roughly 1 billion active users, although around 40% of them only log on during important world events.

6. Trump train

Musk was one of the biggest spenders in the US presidential election, deploying over $270 million to back Trump's race for president, run ads against Democrats, and promote conservative viewpoints.

His starring role in Trump's victory and emergence as one of the president-elect's closest advisors and a co-chief of the new Department of Government Efficiency suggests that his investment in the election has paid off.

7. Building brainpower

Neuralink, Musk's neurotechnology company, was valued at $8 billion this summer, up from about $2 billion three years earlier.

The developer of brain-computer interfaces wants to allow people with quadriplegia to control computers with their thoughts. Musk released footage this spring of the first patient to receive one of its brain implants.

• Elon Musk shared a legal letter to X which said Neuralink faces a probe by the SEC.
• He shared the letter in a series of posts attacking and mocking SEC Chair Gary Gensler.
• Musk wrote, "Oh Gary, how could you do this to me?"

Elon Musk has revealed that Neuralink, his brain-chip implant company, is facing a probe from the Securities and Exchange Commission, with which he has long feuded.

Musk posted a letter on the subject to X Thursday, as well as a mocking, AI-generated image of SEC chair Gary Gensler. He called the SEC "just another weaponized institution doing political dirty work."

"Oh Gary, how could you do this to me?" Musk wrote in the post sharing the letter from his lawyer, Alex Spiro, to Gensler.

In the letter, which was said it was "in the matter of certain purchases, sales, and disclosures of Twitter shares," Spiro said the SEC "reopened" an investigation into Neuralink but didn't elaborate on why. It also said the SEC was preparing action against Musk over his 2022 acquisition of Twitter, now X.

The billionaire later shared another post featuring an AI-generated image of a snail wearing a business suit and said it depicted Gensler.

Neuralink and the SEC didn't immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

The SEC is investigating how Musk bought shares in Twitter ahead of his $44 billion acquisition of the social network.

Musk started buying shares in Twitter in 2022, and by the spring, he had a 9% stake in the company before he struck a deal to buy it outright later in the year.

Spiro, Musk's lawyer, also said in the letter that the SEC issued a "settlement demand" on Wednesday to agree within 48 hours to make a payment or face enforcement action.

Spiro wrote that this followed "a multi-year investigation and more than six years of harassment" of Musk by the SEC.

This is an apparent reference to the SEC suing Musk in 2018 over a tweet in which he claimed he had the funding to take Tesla private, which led to him being forced to step down as chairman.

• Neuralink is launching a trial to see if patients can use its brain implant can control a robot arm.
• Elon Musk's company said the study was a step toward "not only digital freedom, but physical freedom."
• Musk previously said Neuralink could be combined with robotic limbs to create a "Luke Skywalker solution."

Neuralink has successfully implanted its brain chip in two human patients — and now it wants to hook it up to a robotic arm.

Elon Musk's brain implant startup said on Monday that it was launching a trial to test whether patients could use the Neuralink implant to control an "investigational assistive robotic arm."

"This is an important first step towards restoring not only digital freedom, but also physical freedom," read a post announcing the trial on the company's X account.

The trial, which Neuralink is calling Convoy, is very early in its development. But using Neuralink's brain implant to control robotic limbs has long been part of Elon Musk's vision for the company.

Last year, the billionaire suggested Neuralink could be combined with the robotic limbs of Tesla's Optimus robot to create a "Luke Skywalker solution," referencing the "Star Wars" protagonist's prosthetic hand.

Neuralink has said it has implanted its brain chip, which is designed to allow quadriplegic and paralyzed patients to control a computer with their mind, in two test subjects so far.

The implant captures brain activity and sends it to a computer via Bluetooth. It allows the user to control a computer cursor and perform activities, including playing video games, surfing the web, and designing 3D models through visualization.

Musk has suggested that Neuralink could have over a thousand patients with the implant by 2026, and the company is hiring manufacturing technicians and microfabrication specialists as it looks to ramp up production.

Neuralink did not immediately respond to a request for comment, sent outside normal working hours.

• Neuralink, Elon Musk's neurotechnology company, is hiring for multiple manufacturing roles.
• A Neuralink recruiter wrote that the firm is looking for people to "boost production" of its tech.
• Experts say it shows the company ramping up production earlier than most medical device makers would.

Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain-computer interface company, is looking to hire manufacturing technicians and microfabrication specialists.

The company, which is developing a device Musk has compared to a "FitBit in your skull," posted the job listings on its website this week. It also held multiple hiring events at its facilities in California and Texas this month, according to a review of LinkedIn posts from Neuralink recruiters and engineers. Two manufacturing technicians work at the company, based on public LinkedIn profiles, with those employees joining in 2021 and February 2024.

The roles will help "boost production," according to one post. "You will be instrumental in ramping production to accelerate progress towards our goal of restoring autonomy to those with unmet medical needs," another post reads.

Manufacturing technicians in Texas would be paid $22 per hour flat rate to produce brain implants and accessories, and are required to work "extended hours and weekends, as needed." In California, technicians would be paid between $28.85 and $44.23 per hour to manufacture the R1 Surgical Robot, which is designed to fully automate the implantation of Neuralink's brain-computer interface.

A spokesperson for Neuralink did not respond to a request for comment. LinkedIn messages to Neuralink recruiters were not immediately returned.

Musk has said Neuralink's technology will eventually allow people to send messages or play games using only their thoughts. Initially, it will work to help people with neurological disorders.

The company received FDA clearance in May 2023 to launch human trials. So far, it has reported implanting the device in two human patients; one patient had issues with wires in the implant coming loose weeks after the surgery was completed.

Tinglong Dai, a professor of operations management and business analytics at Johns Hopkins University, told Business Insider that job posting indicates Neuralink is "staffing up for volume production."

"That's wild for a company that's only implanted two devices in their trial," Dai said. "But in some sense, this isn't really odd if you consider who is running this business," he said, pointing to Musk's experience with "production hell" at Tesla as perhaps influencing Neuralink's focus on quickly building out manufacturing capabilities

A separate listing for a microfabrication technician was posted two weeks ago and is no longer accepting applications. That role lists "experience working in a cleanroom" — a space designed to limit contamination — as a preferred qualification.

Neuralink also appears to be hiring for manufacturing roles for its surgical robot, a job listing shows.

John Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University who worked on the brain-computer interface BrainGate, described the hiring strategy as unusual.

"Typically, at this stage, you'd be hand-crafting the device. You wouldn't be expecting to scale production until you'd fully finalized it," Donoghue, who helped ramp up production for BrainGate's device, told Business Insider.

The FDA previously rejected Neuralink's bid for human testing in March 2023 over safety risks, Reuters reported. The agency cited concerns about movement from the wires connected to the brain chip and the potential for overheating.

Donoghue believes that Neuralink is at least seven years from the FDA approval required to bring a device to market. Any changes to the device, even small ones, would require the company to get further approval from the FDA and could further extend the timeline, he said.

Donoghue said Neuralink's apparent manufacturing push was outside "the usual process" for medical device companies. The company appears to be investing in mass production earlier than usual, he said.

Outside of the manufacturing roles, Neuralink has more than 30 full-time jobs listed on its careers page. It employs more than 600 people, including several former Tesla and SpaceX employees, according to a review of LinkedIn profiles.

It filed plans for a multi-building facility outside of Austin in 2022, according to the Austin American-Statesman. In July 2024, the company filed construction plans for a $14.7 million, 112,000 square foot facility, public records show, and earlier this year, it moved its state of incorporation to Nevada.

Do you work for Neuralink or have a tip? Reach out to the reporter via a non-work email and device at [email protected] or via the secure-messaging app Signal at 248-894-6012.