For years, “cloud computing” has been a convenient, if slightly fluffy, metaphor for accessing vast server farms over the internet. Australian startup Cortical Labs has apparently decided to take the term with unnerving literalness, replacing some of that silicon with living, firing human neurons. And now, for a price, they’ll let you run your code on it.
Welcome to the Cortical Cloud, a platform that officially moves the concept of “wetware-as-a-service” from science fiction novels to a publicly accessible API. For approximately $2,170 per month per instance, you can now “hire” a biological neural network (BNN) grown from human brain cells and fused to a silicon chip. It’s a bold, slightly unsettling business model that promises to unlock new frontiers in computing, assuming you have the budget and a flexible definition of “end-user license agreement.”
From Pong to the Public Cloud
If the name Cortical Labs rings a bell, it’s because this is the same team that famously taught a cluster of brain cells in a dish—dubbed “DishBrain”—to play the video game Pong back in 2022. That experiment, published in the journal Neuron, demonstrated that these biological circuits could learn and adapt in real-time, far faster than many traditional AI models. It was a watershed moment for what the company calls “Synthetic Biological Intelligence.”
Since then, they’ve leveled up their ambitions considerably. As we’ve covered previously, their neural networks have Cortical Labs Plugs Human Brain Cells Into an LLM After They Mastered DOOM . Now, they’ve productized their creation. The company has officially opened its platform to the public, inviting researchers, developers, and the morbidly curious to see what they can discover with a literal brain in a box.
How to Program a Brain
So, how does one go about renting a slice of biological compute? The process is surprisingly similar to spinning up a server on AWS or Google Cloud, which is perhaps the most surreal part of this entire endeavor. The core of the platform is the CL1, a custom hardware device containing the BNN on a high-density multi-electrode array. This hardware allows for both stimulating the neurons and recording their responses with microsecond latency.
Access to this wetware is managed through the Cortical Labs API (CL API), a Python library that abstracts away the bio-physical complexity. Developers can use a simple SDK to interact with the neurons, sending signals and interpreting the resulting activity spikes.
For those who want to kick the tires before committing a couple of grand, Cortical Labs provides a simulator that mimics the behavior of a real CL1 device. Any code developed against the simulator is designed to be a drop-in replacement for the real thing. The entire software development kit is open-source, and you can find the code on their GitHub repository. Hyperlink: cl-sdk on GitHub.
The Killer App for Wetware
This all begs the question: what is this actually for? Beyond the sheer novelty, Cortical Labs is targeting three primary fields:
- Neuroscience: Providing a standardized platform to study how neurons learn, form memories, and process information in a highly controlled environment.
- Drug Discovery & Toxicology: Researchers can test the effects of new pharmaceutical compounds on real neural circuits to screen for efficacy and neurotoxicity, potentially accelerating treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s or epilepsy.
- Artificial Intelligence: This is the big one. Proponents of biological computing argue that brains are vastly more energy-efficient than silicon-based AI for certain tasks. By studying and harnessing biological intelligence, we might discover entirely new computing paradigms that don’t require planet-spanning data centers.
Of course, this cutting-edge access comes at a price. While a single instance runs about $2,170 a month, Cortical Labs offers a discount for bulk orders—renting ten instances for six months drops the price to around $1,600 per unit per month. As the company cheekily notes, this is “cheaper than a human.” For now, anyway. They also encourage academic institutions to reach out for grants, signaling a clear intention to seed the research community.
The launch of the Cortical Cloud is a strange and significant milestone. It’s the commercialization of a field that has long been theoretical. We’ve moved from simulating neural networks on silicon to offering genuine biological intelligence as a cloud service. What will be built on this platform remains to be seen, but one thing is certain: the line between computer and organism has never been blurrier.