Kernel is one of the two companies (the other being Elon Musk’s Neuralink) that’s working with researchers on brain-computer interfaces. We had an intro call this morning so I could learn what they’re up to. Loose notes:
Speaking with Alanna & Shayna, the communications team at Kernel. They run all of Brian’s comms and marketing for Kernel and for the VC he runs and for his thought leadership.
Foundational insight — everything the world looks like frlows from the capabilities and limitations of the human brains. how we understand each other, how we understand the world, the awesomeness that is the human brain and the evolutionary limitations that are there.
Kernel is somewhat unique in the space in that we’re not starting from a “how to tackle disease” or “move their bodies again” but starting from a place of “how do we expand cognition” with the understanding that once we understand how to do that then we can understand how to tackle problems. We’re starting from the other side, which is there’s so much potential here. How do we build on potential. Solutions will come from that.
Organizing principle is build on understanding. We have very little understanding of how the brain works right now. How do all elements come together to make us who we are? Think about it like FitBit when we learned that we could measure biometric data like heart health and sleep. We’re not at that place in the brain, and that’s partly because we don’t understand how it all works. Right now the tools for measuring and reading it are rudimentary. Anything we do have is enormous and have to be institutionalized, like fMRI.
FOCUSES
- is it possible to have non-invasive (wearable) for our brains? What are the tools for read out, the neuroscience of readout, with the physics of miniaturization?
- Once you figure out how to read, then it’s can you write? Can you deliver nudges to the brain? Is there a way to know, based on something you’re wearing, when you’re dwelling on something unsuccessfully? Would it be possible to nudge your thinking inside your brain? What are most useful and enhancing modes?
KERNEL offices and labs are in LA, in Venice.
Smaller operation in Boston
Hire researchers … Hired the pre-eminent neurophysicist to come in-house and partners and advisers from mostly from
TIMING
Right now what’s going on is entirely proprietary … off record or would have to hold. Kernel and Neuralink are in a race. Whoever gets the first thing that can go to market. Embargoes are necessary. Hooman the CTO can do the explaining on video. He’s lovely. Really wonderful way of understanding complex things. Center of all kinds of modalities. Can do that in February.
- Documentary is being produced … called I Am Human, a doc about this journey to forge man and machine. Focused on the existing things to market around solving problems. Follows three patients, one with Parkinson’s, one blind and one with paralysis. Then to Brian and what he is doing to enhance himself. Releasing in April in Tribeca. Sending a preview.
- Presently working with the Future of Everything team at WSJ to do a deep dive on a narrower focus on what’s coming to market. What’s the process of coming to market?
Future Human 