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Kernel | |
Company type | Private |
Founded | 2016 |
Founder | Bryan Johnson |
Headquarters | Los Angeles, California, U.S. |
Website | kernel |
HI, LLC, doing business as Kernel, is an American company that has developed a non-invasive neuroimaging technology. It is a privately held company headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The company was founded in 2016 by Bryan Johnson. [1] [2]
Johnson founded Kernel in 2016 with a $54 million investment and began researching neuroprosthetics, devices implanted into the brain that mimic, substitute, or assist brain functions. [1] [3]
In May 2020, Kernel introduced two brain-activity monitoring devices, Flux and Flow. [3] [1] The Flow device can both see and record brain activity. [4] [5] [3]
Kernel also introduced "Sound ID," a software that can tell what speech or song a person is listening to just from brain data. [1] The company was featured in the 2020 documentary, I Am Human, about brain–machine interfaces. [6] Kernel raised $53 million in 2020. [7]
Kernel Flow is a wearable time-domain functional near-infrared spectroscopy (TD-fNIRS) system. [9] [10] fNIRs uses infrared light to measure changes in the oxygenation of blood, which is a proxy for neural activity. Kernel Flow can achieve a 200 Hz sampling rate. [11] The spatial resolution of f-NIRS is strongly limited by scattering, with most existing f-NIRS systems having resolutions > 2 cm. [11]
Kernel plans to read and write the underlying functions of the brain. [12] [13]
As of 2019, the company is researching neurological diseases and dysfunctions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, depression and anxiety. [14] Kernel is one of several companies researching links between the human brain and computer interfaces, including Neuralink, Precision Neuroscience, Synchron, and Facebook. [15] Kernel also offers neuroscience as a service to scientists and businesses, conducting subject testing at their office. [1]