Australian startup company Cortical Labs has launched CL1, the world’s first commercial biological computer, which fuses lab-cultivated neurons from human stem cells with silicon to create a new, more advanced form of artificial intelligence.
The new form of AI is called 'Synthetic Biological Intelligence'.
The first commercialised biological computer, the CL1, enables researchers to streamline and enhance drug discovery and testing, improve personalised medicine and aid early disease detection. It is capable of growing, adapting, and learning at a faster rate than purely silicon-based AI. It also requires far less energy consumption. Cortical said the CL1 will have significant ramifications for the technology industry, offering greater automation, reduced energy consumption, and advancements.
The company said units and racks of the CL1 - launched at Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona - will be manufactured to order and ready to ship to customers before the end of the second quarter of 2025. It also offers Wetware-as-a-Service (WaaS), allowing customers to remotely access and work with cultivated cells via the cloud to build applications.
“Today is the culmination of a vision that has powered Cortical Labs for almost six years. We’ve enjoyed a series of critical breakthroughs in recent years, most notably our research in the journal Neuron, through which cultures were embedded in a simulated game-world, and were provided with electrophysiological stimulation and recording to mimic the arcade game 'Pong'. However, our long-term mission has been to democratise this technology, making it accessible to researchers without specialised hardware and software. The CL1 is the realisation of that mission. While today’s announcement is incredibly exciting, it’s the foundation for the next stage of innovation. The real impact and the real implications will come from every researcher, academic or innovator that builds on top of it,” said Dr Hon Weng Chong, the founder and CEO of Cortical Labs.
“Already, we’ve seen incredibly strong interest from researchers, universities and academics from the US, Europe, Singapore, Japan, and Australia. However, there’s only a finite amount of these elite institutions, and so to truly fulfil the technology’s potential, and our mission to democratise it, we’re offering Wetware-as-a-Service. This platform will enable the millions of researchers, innovators and big-thinkers around the world to turn the CL1’s potential into tangible, real-word impact. We’ll provide the platform and support for them to invest in R&D and drive new breakthroughs and research.”
In 2022, the first cohort of Cortical Labs’ neurons learnt to play Pong. When embedded in a simulated game environment and given the right stimulus, rewards, and feedback, the cultures exhibit rapid learning and goal-directed behaviour, demonstrating synthetic biological intelligence.
Their physical growth is across a silicon chip, which has a set of pins that send electrical impulses into the neural structure and receive impulses back in return. This creates the highest bandwidth connection between an organic neural network and a digital world. At the core of this system is Cortical Labs’ Biological Intelligence Operating System (biOS), which constructs their reality – sending information via electrical signals and converting the neuron's activity into actions inside that reality.
MWC will play host to a rack of CL1 computers - some containing live cells - during which Cortical Labs and researchers from the University of Barcelona will showcase the world’s first demonstration of live neurons outside of a laboratory setting. Dr Sandra Acosta, Assistant Professor, Tenure-track, Serra-Hunter Fellow at the University of Barcelona, leads the research.
“The CL1 is an incredible tool to grow our neurons in a fully controlled environment, allowing us to monitor and modify their electrophysiological features. This is definitely an inflexion point for long-term experiments that avoid the risky and disrupting movements out of the incubator or MEA devices to perform the required read-outs,” said Dr Acosta.