Neuralink

Klarna

Neuralink

Neuralink doesn't have a traditional revenue model yet — it's still in clinical trials. The near-term plan is medical devices sold to hospitals and clinics for treating neurological conditions.

Brain-computer interfaces for paralysis, ALS, blindness, and other conditions would be reimbursed by insurance and healthcare systems, similar to cochlear implants or deep brain stimulators.

The long-term vision is consumer neurotechnology — healthy people choosing to get brain implants for enhanced cognition, communication, or AI interaction. This is years or decades away and faces massive regulatory and ethical hurdles.

But if it works, the total addressable market is literally every human brain on the planet.

The surgical robot is potentially a separate revenue stream. Even if the implant itself doesn't dominate, the precision robotics technology developed for neural surgery could be licensed to other medical device companies.

Neuralink has also built custom chip fabrication capabilities that could have applications beyond brain interfaces.

Klarna

Klarna makes money from merchant fees and consumer interest. Merchants pay Klarna 3-6% of each transaction — they're willing to pay because Klarna increases conversion rates by 30%+ and average order values by 45%.

On "Pay in 4" (interest-free installments), Klarna makes money purely from merchant fees. On longer financing (6-36 months), Klarna charges consumers interest up to 25% APR.

Klarna also earns revenue from its shopping app (affiliate commissions when users discover and buy from merchants), and from its Klarna Card.

Neuralink

Elon Musk had been talking about brain-computer interfaces publicly since at least 2016. His stated motivation was existential: if AI becomes superintelligent, humans need a way to merge with it or risk becoming irrelevant.

The solution, in his mind, was a direct neural link between the human brain and computers.

Neuralink was quietly incorporated in July 2016 in California. Musk recruited a team of eight co-founders — neuroscientists, engineers, and chip designers from institutions like UC Berkeley, MIT, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

The founding team included Ben Rapoport, a neurosurgeon who understood both the medical and engineering sides, and Dongjin Seo, who had done PhD research on neural dust (tiny wireless brain sensors).

The company operated in stealth for two years before a 2019 presentation where Musk revealed the vision: a coin-sized device implanted in the skull containing thousands of ultra-thin electrode threads inserted into the brain by a custom-built surgical robot. The threads are thinner than a human hair — roughly 5 microns wide — and each one contains multiple electrodes that read neural signals.

The robot was necessary because no human surgeon could place threads that thin without damaging brain tissue.

Klarna

Sebastian Siemiatkowski, Niklas Adalberth, and Victor Jacobsson were students at the Stockholm School of Economics. In 2005, they entered a startup competition with an idea: let people buy things online and pay later.

At the time, online shopping was still new and most people were terrified of entering their credit card details on the internet. The idea was simple — Klarna would pay the merchant immediately, and the customer would get an invoice with 14-30 days to pay.

The competition judges hated it. The idea was dismissed as financially irresponsible and the team didn't win.

But Siemiatkowski pressed on. Swedish e-commerce was growing fast and merchants were desperate for any way to reduce cart abandonment.

Klarna's "pay after delivery" model was a hit because it shifted the risk — customers could receive the product, try it on, and only pay for what they kept.

The first customers were Swedish e-commerce merchants selling fashion and home goods. Klarna handled the invoicing, fraud detection, and collections.

Merchants saw conversion rates jump because customers were more willing to buy when they didn't have to pay immediately.

Neuralink

Neuralink's growth strategy is the classic Musk playbook: start with the premium use case that justifies the cost, then scale down. Phase 1 is medical — treat severe neurological conditions where no other option exists.

Quadriplegia, ALS, locked-in syndrome. Patients who literally cannot move or speak are willing to undergo experimental brain surgery.

The FDA granted Breakthrough Device designation in 2020, and the first human trial (PRIME study) began in 2024.

Phase 2 is expanding medical indications — blindness, depression, epilepsy, Parkinson's. Each new condition multiplies the patient population and the regulatory pathway, building clinical evidence along the way.

Phase 3 — the moonshot — is consumer enhancement. Musk has described this as "conceptual telepathy," where you think a message and it sends.

This phase requires proving extraordinary safety over years of medical use first. Nobody is going to electively implant a brain chip unless the medical version has been proven safe for a decade.

Klarna

Klarna grew by being embedded at checkout. The strategy was to sign up the biggest online retailers and become a payment option alongside Visa and PayPal.

Once Klarna was at checkout, consumers discovered it organically. The "Pay in 4" button became ubiquitous across fashion, electronics, and home goods retailers.

The Klarna app became a growth engine beyond checkout. By building a shopping app where users could browse products, discover deals, and track deliveries, Klarna turned from a payment method into a shopping destination.

The app has 35+ million monthly active users who start their shopping journey inside Klarna before even visiting a retailer.

International expansion was aggressive. Starting in Sweden, Klarna rolled out across Europe, then into the US, UK, and Australia.

The US became the biggest growth market — American consumers were especially receptive to Pay in 4 as an alternative to credit cards. By 2023, Klarna had 34 million US users.

Neuralink

The FDA and regulatory approval process is the primary bottleneck. Brain implants are Class III medical devices — the highest risk category.

Every design change, every new indication, requires extensive clinical data. The USDA also investigated Neuralink in 2022 for potential animal welfare violations in their primate testing program, which created PR headaches.

Long-term biocompatibility is an unsolved problem. The brain treats any foreign object as an invader and forms scar tissue around it, which can degrade signal quality over time.

Making an implant that works reliably for decades inside a hostile biological environment is one of the hardest engineering problems in medicine. Neuralink's thread retraction issue in their first human patient — where some threads pulled away from the brain — highlighted how much work remains.

Talent retention has been rocky. Max Hodak, the original president, left in 2021.

Several founding scientists departed. Working for Musk is notoriously demanding, and the timeline pressure on a medical device company clashes with the inherent need for cautious, methodical development.

Klarna

The valuation collapse was humiliating. Klarna raised at a $46 billion valuation from SoftBank in 2021.

One year later, they raised a down round at $6.7 billion — an 85% haircut. It was the most dramatic valuation drop in fintech history.

Employee stock options were underwater. Siemiatkowski had to lay off 10% of the workforce.

The entire BNPL category went from hot to radioactive in months.

Credit losses are the existential risk. Klarna is lending money to consumers who want to buy things they can't afford to pay for right now.

When the economy slows, defaults rise. Klarna's credit losses hit $1 billion in 2022.

The company had to tighten underwriting significantly and pull back from riskier markets. The tension between growth (approve more loans) and profitability (reject risky borrowers) defines every quarter.

The IPO in 2025 was a comeback story but with caveats. Klarna went public at $15 billion — a major recovery from the $6.7 billion trough but still less than a third of its 2021 peak.

The company finally turned profitable by slashing costs with AI (replacing hundreds of customer service agents with AI chatbots) and tightening credit standards. But investors remain cautious about the BNPL model's long-term sustainability.

Neuralink

The N1 Implant — a coin-sized device (23mm diameter, 8mm thick) implanted flush with the skull containing a custom chip that wirelessly transmits neural data to external devices via Bluetooth. The R1 Robot — a precision surgical system that inserts 1,024 electrode threads into the brain with micron-level accuracy, avoiding blood vessels using computer vision.

The N1 User App — software that translates neural signals into computer commands, allowing users to control cursors, keyboards, and eventually robotic limbs through thought alone. BCI Software Platform — the signal processing and machine learning stack that decodes raw brain signals into intended actions.

Klarna

Pay in 4 is the signature product — split any purchase into four interest-free payments over six weeks. Pay in 30 lets customers receive the product first and pay within 30 days.

Financing offers longer-term payment plans with interest for larger purchases. The Klarna App is a shopping destination — browse deals, track orders, manage payments, and earn cashback.

The Klarna Card is a physical Visa card that lets users Pay in 4 anywhere. Klarna Creator is a platform for influencers to earn commissions sharing products.

Klarna AI is their customer service chatbot that handles two-thirds of support queries.

Neuralink

Elon Musk has been the primary funder, investing hundreds of millions of his personal wealth. The company raised $205 million in a Series C in 2021, then $280 million in a Series D in 2023 led by Founders Fund (Peter Thiel's firm).

A 2024 round reportedly valued the company at $8.9 billion. Google Ventures (GV) and DFJ Growth have also participated.

The investor base is narrow compared to most startups at this valuation.

Klarna

Sequoia Capital, SoftBank, Silver Lake, GIC, Atomico, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Heartland