Image: Fortune
Summary
- Ray Kurzweil has joined Subsense as a product and vision advisor.
- Subsense is developing a non-surgical approach that uses nasally inhaled charged nanoparticles combined with a magnetic-coil headset to stimulate and read brain activity.
- Unlike Neuralink, it requires no skull surgery, but the company is still in preclinical testing with mice.
Ray Kurzweil has joined a startup that aims to connect the brain to a computer using nanoparticles inhaled through the nose. Kurzweil, who has spent years researching AI at Google, announced on September 3 (local time) at an event held at company headquarters in Palo Alto, California, that he's joining Subsense as a product and vision advisor. Like Elon Musk's Neuralink, Subsense is building a brain-computer interface (BCI) — but instead of surgery to open the skull, it's taking the route of inhaling nanoparticles through the nose.
A longtime advocate of the singularity
Kurzweil is known for books like "The Age of Intelligent Machines" and "The Singularity is Near." He's long argued for what's called the singularity — the idea that technology will soon carry humans beyond the limits of the biological brain — and he's received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. At the event, he said that external devices like smartphones actually slow down how quickly people can tap into the power of AI, and that he ultimately wants to merge the smartphone with the brain itself. He added that the reason humans exist is to expand toward a bigger horizon and grow beyond themselves.
To put it plainly: the singularity Kurzweil talks about is the theory that AI will let humans go beyond their biological limits. Subsense is trying to build that connection point not through a smartphone, but directly inside the brain, using nanoparticles inhaled through the nose.
How it differs from Neuralink
The method Subsense is developing works somewhat like inhaling an allergy nasal spray — charged nanoparticles are sent through the nose and into the brain. Once inside, the nanoparticles are controlled by a special cap or headset with built-in magnetic coils, which the company says can be used to stimulate neurons in specific regions or to read neural activity. At the event, the company showed a non-functional mockup of the cap, which looked like a cross between a baseball cap and a bike helmet.
| Item | Subsense | Neuralink |
|---|---|---|
| Method | Inhaled nanoparticles + magnetic-coil headset | Wireless chip implanted after skull surgery |
| Surgery required | Non-surgical (though still invasive) | Requires surgery |
| Current stage | Preclinical, testing in mice | Implanted in roughly 12 people so far |
| Funding raised | $27 million | Not mentioned in the source |
Subsense is pursuing a less invasive route than Neuralink, but since it still involves putting nanoparticles inside the brain, it's not accurate to call the approach fully non-invasive.
Still at the mouse-testing stage
Subsense has raised $27 million and is currently in the preclinical stage, testing various components of the technology and running experiments in mice. The company's plan is to first commercialize the technology for medical use, then eventually expand into consumer products. CEO Alexandrova said at the event that "brain-computer interfaces could be the most intimate technology humanity has ever created." According to the company, Kurzweil will advise on the company's technology roadmap going forward and offer his perspective on how the combination of AI and neural interfaces could reshape human-computer interaction.
Editor's view
It's notable in itself that Kurzweil, who has spent so long talking about software intelligence, is now advising a hardware startup. A figure who has mostly preached the singularity through words and theory putting his name behind a company that literally puts nanoparticles into the brain feels like an acknowledgment — even from within the AI camp — that software alone can't dissolve the boundary between humans and machines. For anyone who's been watching the BCI space, Neuralink has led with surgical implants while later entrants like Subsense have chased a different market through non-surgical routes; this announcement reads as a sign that the competition has now spilled over into recruiting big names. Still, the lesson for health-tech or neuroscience teams elsewhere is to stay level-headed. Rather than banking on the weight of Kurzweil's name, the more reliable signals to watch are whether actual preclinical data gets published and when the regulatory approval process begins. In the coming months, Subsense is likely to reveal more of what the technology can actually do — whether through mouse-study results or its next funding round.
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