Biological Computing Co. Raises $25M
San Francisco-based The Biological Computing Co. raised a $25 million seed round to develop computing systems using living neurons instead of silicon for AI processing. TBC claims this neuron-based approach could eventually surpass traditional hardware in both efficiency and learning capability.
- The seed round was led by Primary Ventures, with participation from Builders VC, Refactor Capital, Wonder Ventures, E1 Ventures, Tusk Ventures, and Proximity. - Co-founders Alex Ksendsovsky and Jon Pomeraniec are both neurosurgeon-neuroscientists. The company, formerly known as Biological Black Box, has opened a new lab in San Francisco's Mission Bay to support customer deployment. - The technology falls under an emerging field called Organoid Intelligence (OI), which utilizes 3D cultures of brain cells, known as organoids, as "biological hardware". - Proponents claim this biological computing approach is far more energy-efficient; the human brain uses about 20 watts of power, whereas traditional AI hardware can require millions of watts. - Instead of replacing existing AI models, the company's platform integrates with them to enhance performance and reduce computational cost for tasks like computer vision and generative video. - Neuralink co-founder Tim Gardner noted that The Biological Computing Co. is using the living neuron cultures to discover new learning rules that could inform the next generation of artificial intelligence. - The company's platform works by encoding data such as images and video into living neurons and then decoding the neural activity into representations that can be mapped onto AI models. - Looking ahead, the company aims to launch hybrid neuro-silicon clusters for cloud computing environments by 2027.
