Elon Musk wants you to control a computer with only your thoughts. That operation, like many of his science-fiction goals, is growing in Austin.
Neuralink filed to develop an office at 2200 Caldwell Lane in Del Valle, just east of Austin. The company plans to start work on July 15 and finish construction by the end of next May, according to filings with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation.
The office will stand three stories tall and cover 112,000 square feet. It is expected to cost $14.7 million, or $131 per square foot. The plans call for offices, a machine shop and cleanroom for device manufacturing. Austin-based Studio8 Architects is attached to the project.
The development is set to rise near Musk’s “Project Amazing,” a 110-home development with Lennar. The billionaire has moved several of his businesses — and his own residence — to the Austin area. His tunneling business, the Boring Company, and his broadband internet startup, Starlink, are headquartered in the metro, and Tesla built a so-called gigafactory in Pflugerville to churn out the company’s Cybertruck. Earlier this year, SpaceX announced plans to build a $100 million office in Brownsville, at the southernmost tip of Texas.
Neuralink is headquartered in Fremont, California. The company recently posted a job opening on LinkedIn for a construction engineer based in Austin to build out the company’s construction efforts.
In a livestream on Twitter earlier today, Musk said the company plans to implant a Neuralink device in a second patient next week. It allows a user to control a computer or phone with his or her thoughts.
At the start of the year, the company performed its first human implant, placing a computer the size of “a small stack of quarters” in a quadriplegic man’s brain. The device reads activity in his neurons to allow him to control a computer cursor. He has become skilled enough with the device to play video games.
For now, the company’s stated goal is to “restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs.” Longer term, Musk said he plans to “mitigate the civilizational risk of AI by having a closer symbiosis between human intelligence and digital intelligence.”
But before that, they’ll need a place to build the devices. Coming soon to rural Austin.
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