{"id":538706,"date":"2026-03-13T22:53:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/538706\/"},"modified":"2026-03-13T22:53:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T22:53:16","slug":"the-startup-that-taught-brain-cells-to-play-pong-is-coming-for-the-data-centre-industry-capital-brief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/538706\/","title":{"rendered":"The startup that taught brain cells to play Pong is coming for the data centre industry \u2014 Capital Brief"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cortical Labs <a href=\"https:\/\/www.capitalbrief.com\/article\/the-australian-startup-building-computers-out-of-human-brains-a30d6821-cf2d-47db-b0cf-85a6fe294cb8\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">went viral<\/a> in 2022 for making a culture of human cells learn to play the computer game Pong. Four years later, the Melbourne-founded startup <a href=\"https:\/\/www.capitalbrief.com\/briefing\/cortical-labs-launches-first-human-brain-cell-data-centre-1cdd559d-98f9-4df3-a97a-b6f0f7a72ca0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">has announced <\/a>what is claims is the world\u2019s first biological data centre.<\/p>\n<p>Founded by Hon Weng Chong in 2019, Cortical Labs is building computing facilities that run on human neurons instead of silicon chips, consuming a fraction of the energy of traditional GPU-based infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>The startup, which has raised USD12 million ($17.11 million) to date, with investors including Horizons Ventures, Blackbird Ventures, LifeX Ventures, Radar Ventures, 3C AGI, Sybil Lau, Tom Oxley, Gobi Ventures and the CIA\u2019s In-Q-Tel, has launched proof of concept data centres in Melbourne and Singapore.<\/p>\n<p>These biological data centres have their origins in the Pong demo; it was the catalyst for Cortical Labs to consider commercialising its technology. Following the demo the startup trained neurons to play Doom, a more complex game that\u2019s widely used in technology circles for testing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cortical Labs went viral in 2022 for making a culture of human cells learn to play the computer&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":538707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[254,64,63,1772,15867,1483,105],"class_list":["post-538706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-data-centres","tag-deep-tech","tag-startups","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=538706"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/538706\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/538707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=538706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=538706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=538706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}