AI breakthrough: Startup unveils world’s first biocomputer powered by human brain cells, redefining computing
The company claims this hybrid system can learn and adapt faster than traditional silicon-based AI while consuming significantly less energy.
- Mar 7, 2025,
- Updated Mar 7, 2025 2:07 PM IST
In a breakthrough that blurs the lines between technology and biology, an Australian startup has unveiled the world’s first commercial biological computer — one powered by living human cells.
The CL1, developed by Melbourne-based Cortical Labs, merges human stem cell-derived neurons with silicon, introducing a new category of AI called "Synthetic Biological Intelligence" (SBI). The company claims this hybrid system can learn and adapt faster than traditional silicon-based AI while consuming significantly less energy.
Cortical’s CL1 was officially launched on March 2, 2025, in Barcelona and is expected to revolutionize scientific and medical research.
"Unlike using artificial neural networks, we grow our real biological neurons into networks, onto computer chips," Cortical Labs' founder and CEO, Dr. Hon Weng Chong, told Reuters at the Mobile World Congress. "We take blood or skin and we can transform them into stem cells and from stem cells into brain cells or neurons that we then use them for compute and intelligence," he explained.
These human-cell neural networks form an ever-evolving organic computer that engineers say learns so rapidly and flexibly that it outpaces the AI chips used to train large language models like ChatGPT.
This cutting-edge biocomputing technology has the potential to transform fields ranging from drug discovery to robotics, offering unprecedented personalization and efficiency. The CL1, set for wide availability in the second half of 2025, marks a major milestone for Cortical Labs.
The company is assembling multiple units into a biological neural network server stack, each containing 30 cell-based computing units. The first of these stacks is expected to go online in the coming months. By the end of the year, Cortical aims to have four stacks running, accessible via a cloud system. Initial pricing for the CL1 starts at approximately $35,000—significantly lower than the €80,000 ($85,000) price tag of comparable technologies.
Cortical Labs first gained global attention in 2022 when it developed a self-learning "computer brain" by placing 800,000 human and mouse neurons on a chip and training them to play a video game. That same year, the team demonstrated how rodent and human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) could be integrated into high-density multielectrode arrays (HD-MEAs) to create highly efficient, self-organizing neural networks.
In a breakthrough that blurs the lines between technology and biology, an Australian startup has unveiled the world’s first commercial biological computer — one powered by living human cells.
The CL1, developed by Melbourne-based Cortical Labs, merges human stem cell-derived neurons with silicon, introducing a new category of AI called "Synthetic Biological Intelligence" (SBI). The company claims this hybrid system can learn and adapt faster than traditional silicon-based AI while consuming significantly less energy.
Cortical’s CL1 was officially launched on March 2, 2025, in Barcelona and is expected to revolutionize scientific and medical research.
"Unlike using artificial neural networks, we grow our real biological neurons into networks, onto computer chips," Cortical Labs' founder and CEO, Dr. Hon Weng Chong, told Reuters at the Mobile World Congress. "We take blood or skin and we can transform them into stem cells and from stem cells into brain cells or neurons that we then use them for compute and intelligence," he explained.
These human-cell neural networks form an ever-evolving organic computer that engineers say learns so rapidly and flexibly that it outpaces the AI chips used to train large language models like ChatGPT.
This cutting-edge biocomputing technology has the potential to transform fields ranging from drug discovery to robotics, offering unprecedented personalization and efficiency. The CL1, set for wide availability in the second half of 2025, marks a major milestone for Cortical Labs.
The company is assembling multiple units into a biological neural network server stack, each containing 30 cell-based computing units. The first of these stacks is expected to go online in the coming months. By the end of the year, Cortical aims to have four stacks running, accessible via a cloud system. Initial pricing for the CL1 starts at approximately $35,000—significantly lower than the €80,000 ($85,000) price tag of comparable technologies.
Cortical Labs first gained global attention in 2022 when it developed a self-learning "computer brain" by placing 800,000 human and mouse neurons on a chip and training them to play a video game. That same year, the team demonstrated how rodent and human-induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) could be integrated into high-density multielectrode arrays (HD-MEAs) to create highly efficient, self-organizing neural networks.