The Company Helping Paralyzed People Move And Thrive Again - EP 64 Dave Marver

Our expertise is understanding how to stimulate the spinal cord to restore movement and other functions, and the addition of a BCI may make that more effective.

Welcome. To the Core Memory Podcast. This is Ashlee Vance. Thank you for joining us for another episode. We have a friend on the podcast this week. Dave Marver, CEO of Onward, is here in town in San Francisco. How are you?

Doing well, Ashlee. Thank you.

Usually we see each other in, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna lean into it and then you correct me, but in Lausanne.

Lausanne.

Lausanne.

Oh, you know, but you did better. Most people say Lucerne, so they confuse the city completely.

Oh, I was trying to French it up, but I'm going too far. I'm going too far. So we usually meet in Switzerland. I think I met you, might have been 4 years ago.

I think it was your, you know, your Hello World series where you were highlighting innovation that happens.

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. We do. Yes. When I was at Bloomberg doing Hello World. Yeah. And yeah, we were shooting an episode in Switzerland and I'd seen what you guys are doing, which I should explain to people really quick. You got, well, we're gonna get deep into it. I'll go quick on this part.

Yeah.

And then we'll get into it. But you guys make a spinal implant and it does— there's an external device, there's an internal device. They do different things from helping paralyzed people move again to regulating blood pressure and things like that. And now it's connecting into a brain-computer interface as well. And this is kind of how we met. I'd seen videos of people It's miraculous stuff. People walking again, you know, it definitely catches your attention. And so we came out and we filmed with two people, Michelle, who's an Italian gentleman. Right. And then Julie, who's from Belgium. Exactly.

Very good French pronunciation of Julie, by the way.

I mean, she's— well, I'll tell her story in a minute.

She's memorable.

Yeah, she was a memorable thing. So that was the first time we shot. And then we've been back a couple of times and We're kind of chasing some other stuff now and watching how you guys— the journey, the technology develops and everything.

Well, we appreciate you highlighting some of the innovation that occurs outside the Silicon Valley here, which is great. And, you know, we're very much a medtech company. Yeah, our leadership is steeped in medtech experience and our cap table is comprised of medtech investors. So this is great for me because I think we can accelerate and, um, and pursue our, our mission faster and more effectively if maybe if we incorporate some tech. So I appreciate getting some exposure here on the Core Memory Podcast today.

You come to the right place for brain-computer interfaces and all biotech. I assume you're in town this week for JPM, which for people who don't know is this massive, um, because it's like beyond biotech but kind of biotech everything and, and Yeah, it's the—

I feel like my headphones are slipping out the back.

Yeah, yeah.

Do you ever feel that way?

There we go.

There we go. Okay.

Yeah.

Gotta get the, the, the tech right here. Yeah. In for this JPMorgan conference, which for the last couple of decades has been the number one life science, um, business slash investor conference. So it's a great, a great place to meet with your investment bankers and equity research analysts.

Yeah.

And, and current and prospective investors and partners. And, uh, um, it's sort of the best and worst of San Francisco. Because it's a beautiful city and everyone, everyone is here for this conference and you can meet scores of people in just a few days. But then, you know, you try to save some money on the hotel and you're in the Tenderloin and it gets super interesting, super fast.

Yes, I used to live in the Tenderloin. I'm familiar. Yeah, the conference looks exhausting. I—

Yeah, yeah. I think everyone went home but me. So I'm here chatting with you and it's, what, 9-hour time difference with Switzerland. So I have my espresso. And as we approach midnight body clock time, Let's talk neurotech.

Okay. Okay. Well, we'll pump you full of caffeine and then I'll try to keep it, try to keep it interesting. But yeah, well, let's, let's, there's all kinds of places we could go. I think we should maybe describe some of the tech in a little more detail because I've always found the story funny in some ways. You know, you see the videos of, we've talked about this before. It's like, just so people know, I mean, there's a woman we've been hanging out with lately, Suzanne Edwards, right?

I think.

Yeah. She's, she's British. And I think she was paralyzed in her early 20s. It wasn't actually— she was surfing, but it wasn't a surfing accident. She had this really unfortunate incident where a building collapsed and she fell a couple of stories. And then so she was paralyzed for about even longer than 14 or 15 years or somewhere around there, I think. And then came to you guys and she gets a spinal implant. It has electrodes on this implant. They place them. On the spine. And then, and then you guys are stimulating the spine and we've been with her as this is the part that I find so miraculous. It's a long period of time to not, not have the use of your legs. And then, and then, you know, we see her walking again. We hung out with her actually. She, she works for Airbnb and she made a trip to San Francisco and she was because we walked in Switzerland as part of her therapy and then, and then out here just by the water and everything. It's a really moving story. But I see videos of this. We've made videos of this. I still don't feel like the public— if I just went to someone random on the street, that they would know that paralyzed people have even this option. I just feel like this is not common knowledge.

Oh, I fully agree. Yeah, it is common knowledge that you can put a BCI in and you can play a video game. But in many respects, it's perhaps more useful and impactful to help people recover use of their paralyzed limbs. And that's really our mission. You described what is the most advanced thing in our pipeline, which is when we're combining our implanted spinal cord stimulation platform, something we call Arc IM, with an implanted brain-computer interface.

I forgot to mention that Suzanne does have the BCI as well.

Yes, exactly. So she has this— platform, implanted platform that enables thought-driven movement restoration. You know, she has the movement intention and that's sent wirelessly to our spinal cord stimulator to enable thought-driven movement.

So, and it takes some configuration, but she thinks, I want to take a step, I want to move my right foot forward. Obviously, those— that intention is, is she was walking before. It's kind of built into her body and a little bit of muscle memory. And so, and then So she's having this thought, it's being passed to the spinal device and then helping trigger this action.

Yeah, exactly right. The— I don't want to talk too much about that, though, because I think one of my concerns is that the, the whole area of BCI is a bit overhyped. And our population, you've met some of them, you know, and I want to make sure that they have hope, but realistic hope.

Yeah.

And one of the things I want to avoid is these headlines, you know, paralyzed man walks again and And this could be 5 or 6 years away. And the walking itself is not perfect. We're very pleased to have this platform. We do think it is in many respects revolutionary. But I also want to spend some time today on some of the other things that we have out that are doing really miraculous things for these people and that are commercially available already or will be within a couple of years. So here I couldn't help myself as CEO. I'm trying to manage the podcast.

No, no, no, no.

We'll go wherever you want to go, of course.

But I think we're going to have time to cover everything. And no, I think— this— we mentioned Julie. I mean, well, let's do her story in a second because I think, I think it really helps.

Yeah, and I shouldn't have done that. Forget it.

No, you're fine.

But, but, you know, our, our BCI is, um, it's a little bit different than the other BCI companies that, that are talked about on this, um, podcast. There's a lot of discussion about Neuralink and Synchron and, and even some of the, I guess, what are described as the second generation modalities, like Merge Labs, the news that you broke today. Broke it today. Ultra focus ultrasound. Yeah, you want to break some news? Come on, core memory, baby. Um, um, so our BCI is, I'd say, comparatively boring, frankly, but it's really clinically viable. Yeah, so it's, um, I can actually hold it up here for people that want to see it.

So that's the device that would go in the head?

Exactly. So, uh, this is epidural, so it's outside the dura, the lining of the brain. And then there are 64 electrodes here that, that contact the, the motor cortex, the place where movement intention originates, but through the dura. So we're not having to open up the brain and risk infection and some of those other complications. And then so this serves the function of the skull. It's like a titanium portion of your skull. Then the scalp and the hair grow over it.

So an actual hole is taken out of the skull and that fits, slots right into it.

Which sounds crazy, but for a neurosurgeon, that's a relatively straightforward procedure. And neurosurgeons are delighted to not have to go subdural or into the brain itself. And for us, this is like a really safe and responsible way to advance this BCI platform, this thought-driven movement platform. This has been implanted in humans for 8 years.

And it's a French, it's a sort of French company or, you know, research?

Yeah, this is not homegrown. We exclusively licensed the technology. You have to manufacture and develop and commercialize it. And it's from like the French equivalent of the Los Alamos National Labs. Okay. So it's like their nuclear agency, and then they have like a medical group within. And, um, and we'd been experimenting with this, so we think it's— for us, at least our purpose— is the best BCI out there today, just because of the safety profile. And, and so this is what we're using to, to implant humans today in the context of what's called a clinical feasibility study.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I, I mean, I think you make a really good point, which is in the US, in Silicon Valley, we've had this BCI boom over the last— it's almost like 10 years to the date, really, since, since kind of Kernel was starting and Neuralink were starting. And so you had Brian Johnson and you had Elon come into this field with a bunch of money, a field that had been very academic and, and researchy and Now we have, I don't know, there's at least 12 probably, I think. Yeah. All different platforms in the, in the US. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, I think you're right, it does get overhyped. What I've always appreciated about you guys is that, you know, you were taking the most direct path to helping people and getting this in things that regulators weren't going to have to look at as this brand new device and go through all this drama. And, and, and, you know, it was, it was a really practical, smart way to do it. I don't want to put a target on you guys' back. I think I've written about this before. I know we've talked about it, but, you know, I've been at Neuralink a couple of years ago and yeah, I mean, this was one of, they're like, well, how come Audward's already in people? You know what I mean? It was driving Elon crazy.

And so, you know, there's different paths you could choose, but I think they're, they're doing good work in that they're developing really advanced platforms, but sometimes those platforms are in search of an indication, or what I would call a recovery target, whereas we clearly just as quickly as possible want to get therapies and solutions out there into the clinic and into homes where they can really help people at scale. Yeah. And so for us, this is like a very viable Gen 1, but it is important to note that our Arc IM device, which I'm, I'm holding up here, this is our, uh, implanted neurostimulator, it's agnostic. So we're pairing it today with this BCI, but that doesn't mean we can't partner with these other BCI companies like Precision Neuro or Synchron or Neuralink or others. We just need the data, the movement intention itself, and we can take those instructions and translate them into programming parameters for our neurostimulator, our spinal cord stimulator.

I did want to ask you about that at some point in this chat. So anyway, I'll just do it now since we were talking about it. I mean, if you did go with Precision, Neuralink, let's use them instead of Synchron for a minute just because they have more horsepower. They're at the higher channel count. Yeah, they're at the very edge of number of electrodes, how much information can be processed. So something like that, I mean, that's why that would be potentially beneficial for you. Does that help with the possibilities of what somebody could do? It could.

I mean, the channel count means there's more resolution, more data. For us, if we're trying to restore movement of the, of the legs, to restore mobility, yeah, we don't need that much data because you're, you know, you've got large muscle groups that you're just trying to stimulate in sequence, whereas the, the hands, the arms, the fingers, you need a lot more data, a lot more information. So more is generally better, but also you have to balance that against the degree of invasiveness. So Neuralink is fairly invasive, penetrating the brain itself. Precision Neuro doesn't penetrate the brain, but it is subdural. Yeah. And then Synchron again is intravascular, but then fewer channels and maybe you can't get it exactly up where you want to. Yeah, but they're all working on next-gen devices and we want to maintain relationships with all of them because if they can help us fulfill our mission, that's, that's a good thing.

Yeah.

Okay.

So there's going to be more of the, the spinal work that I want to unpack just because there's, there's a couple of people that we've also hung out with in Switzerland who are near and dear to my heart. Yeah. And I want to tell a little bit about their stories, but I do want to go back to the story of Julie really quick. So when I went on this trip, so there was this gentleman, Michele, he's Italian. He had the spinal implant. He didn't have the brain computer interface. And so he would trigger actions when he wanted to walk and exercise through an iPad, through an external—

Yeah, with a clicker.

A clicker. And so if you don't have the BCI, you need this external device.

Yeah, it essentially tells the stimulator, I'm ready for the next step. Right. So, right, so apply the stimulation, the instructions to my leg so I can take the next step.

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Yeah, well, the general public can, and those who, who unfortunately don't know anyone with a spinal cord injury, they assume that people with spinal cord injury are just dealing with paralysis and loss of sensation and that they just want to walk again.

Yeah.

But if you, if you ask the community, you know, those with injuries, they prioritize other things that will help them get through the day. They want normal blood pressure. They want to be able to go to the bathroom without having to insert a catheter every time. They want to be able to move their bowels without waiting 2 hours after inserting a suppository. These things really matter and really affect their quality of life. And as you mentioned, just their emotional state, their buoyancy. And so one of the nice things about our platform is that it has the potential to address all of those things. We just place the lead in different areas of the spinal cord that are responsible for managing or governing those different functions. And this is really the genius of our founders, whom we can get to in a moment. And blood pressure is very much an underappreciated outcome of spinal cord injury and sometimes Parkinson's disease as well. And this is not hypertension, you know, that a lot of folks get. This is chronic low blood pressure, which is often tied to changes in posture. Trying to transition from bed to the wheelchair in the morning can take an hour or two, or just sitting upright or standing. Uh, the phenomenon that I like to explain is, is, okay, if you have normal physiology, sometimes you just get up too quickly and you black out for like a millisecond, but your body immediately corrects. Yeah, their body can't correct because the signal from the brain doesn't reach the destination, so they're stuck in this zone that they just have to kind of wait out. Where they're constantly fainting and lightheaded. Moreover, because they have low blood pressure, they just don't have good blood transport and oxygenation to their brain. So they, they report just feeling sluggish, and they don't think clearly, they don't see clearly. And so just elevating that blood pressure into a normal range has a profound impact on their lives, which you saw with Julie.

Yeah.

And indeed, um, you know, one of your guests— you had a great podcast with Sumner Norman, yeah, saying how many of the people with SCI are depressed. Well, I mean, I was— when I was listening to that, I was thinking, well, a lot of that could also be low blood pressure, you know, because they just don't feel energetic.

Yeah.

And they describe when they're stimulated some sort of coming back to life. And indeed, you're right, um, euthanasia is an option in Belgium where Julie lives, and she was going to pursue that option if this if the study, if this intervention was not successful. And this is bright, engaging young woman, like such a bright light, uh, PhD in archaeology. And, and so this is what motivates us. I mean, we've got to succeed here.

Yeah, I have to say, it was one of the most moving things I've ever, I've ever covered. I, I had no idea. I remember there was a moment that was pretty funny. I, uh, I don't think— well, you weren't there that day because we were kind of with the therapist. And then Julie and Michelle went out in the hallway. That was the first time they had ever met before. And I was— we were filming, and sometimes I get out of the way of the camera, so I just kind of hide like a fly on the wall. So I was in the hallway, you know, just listening, but I wasn't, you know, I wasn't being creepy or anything.

I think you'd have a hard time crossing over into creepy, Ashlee. That's not really in your portfolio.

I appreciate that. I was just off to the side and I could hear them talking and it was really fascinating because they were comparing notes on what it felt like in their body when the implant turns on. And it was just really fascinating. What's it like for you? And then, you know, Michelle, I don't want to misspeak because it was a long time ago, but, you know, he was talking about sort of like a warmth or energy, you know, that he gets. She's like, oh yeah, I get that too. And it was just, it was really interesting to watch them.

It was interesting. We thought when we were first developing this, this blood pressure therapy that, you know, you can turn on the therapy with a smartwatch. Yeah, okay, they're just going to turn on stimulation when they feel faint or lightheaded, but all of them are using it the entire day because they're feeling more energetic and more, more normal. It's bringing them back to life.

Yeah.

So, so we're really keen on just extending the battery life so they can, you know, they don't have to pause midday and rest and recharge the battery. You know, these are things that we're working on.

Yeah.

As we, as we continue to refine the technology. And, and this therapy by the way, is, is close. So we have an IDE, so permission from the US FDA to start a large-scale trial. We're activating sites in the US as we speak, as we record this, and we hope that this is going to be on the market helping people in 2028. So not far away.

Okay, that's what I wanted to ask you, like, for you, because you guys do all these different things, and there's, there's— we've been talking mostly about, about implanted devices, but there's external device as well. So So between Europe and the United States and all these different things that you guys do, where are we at in terms of what is your technology used most often for now? And, and what is at which stages of, of approval?

Yeah. And I, I consider our job here in this whole ecosystem to be a translation engine, you know, bring interesting and compelling research to clinics and homes where it can actually help people. If it just winds up in a clinical paper or some cool podcast somewhere. So what? Who cares, you know? And so that's what motivates us. And we got our first technology to market last year in 2025, and that's our external stimulator, which we call Arc EX. EX for external. Holding it up here for those of you, yeah, who are watching on YouTube, wherever, wherever you can catch the Core Memory Podcast.

All over the place.

All over the place. Um, and so this device connects to electrodes that are placed on the skin in the neck area because it's the cervical spinal cord that controls hand function. So the first indication or recovery target for ArchiEx is restoring hand strength and sensation, because that's the number one priority. If people break their necks, if they have tetraplegia, they want to use their hands so they can feed themselves, clothe themselves, go to the bathroom by themselves. So that's where we started.

Okay, so that's, that's— so is that the— would that— that's the implant?

This is— this This is the lead that's placed on the spinal cord. This connects to the implanted neurostimulator. This is part of the Arc IM system, right?

So for the, the external—

for the external, I have it in my bag. You'll just use your imagination.

Yeah, yeah.

But this, this device connects to a cable, and then that cable connects to electrodes, just like if you're old enough to have had a 12-lead electrogram.

Yeah.

You know, a couple of those leads or stickers are placed on the neck.

And then, so, so somebody has lost the use of their their hands and their limbs, their upper limbs.

Yes.

And then it's, it's giving them enough back to start doing— I mean, I've seen people playing guitar, things like—

Yeah, exactly right. So most spinal cord injuries aren't what we call complete. So there's some spared connection between the brain and the spinal cord, but not enough for a person to have functional movement.

Yeah.

So we're amplifying the spinal cord on and, and somewhat below the area of injury. So when that device is on, that external device, it allows a person to move in a way they otherwise could not. Okay. Then by training, performing the movement, they recover function. It's like if you— hope it doesn't happen— you go skiing and you bust your knee, you've got to rehab it. And to rehab it, you have to move. Yeah. So we're enabling the movement that, that enables rehab.

And, and that's available in, in Europe and Can you—

Yeah, so for most of last year, we got FDA approval. It's called a de novo approval. So it's a non-significant risk device for which there is no predicate. So innovative device like that. We got FDA approval. And so it's been commercially available in the US all of last year. I don't know when this is going to air, but—

I don't either.

We'll just say it's in scores of clinics already. And so it's broadly available. It's doing really well and helping people in a profound way. And then at the end of 2025, we got CE mark, which is regulatory approval in Europe. We also got what's called a 510, which is an FDA approval, so we can— this device can now be used in the home.

Okay.

And you can imagine if you have tetraplegia, it's hard to get to the clinic, uh, and so it's— we, we're really, uh, pleased that this is now available in the home where people can use it privately and conveniently. Uh, so that's, that's a really, uh, very important milestone for us.

Yeah. Okay. And then, and then bring us up to speed on, on some of the, the, the other stuff, spinal work.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the, the for the— so that's RTX commercialized. Great. And we just want to scale that up, make it broadly available, start adding indications beyond just hand function if possible. So that's some of the stuff that we'll be doing with Arc IM, the implanted neurostimulator. This we've used in clinical feasibility studies. So these are studies in humans, up to 15 people for a number of different things, standing and walking again. In fact, that's the reason the company was founded in 2015. Blood pressure regulation, which we just discussed in the context of Julie. Um, also there's a, an open clinical study funded by the Christopher Reeve Foundation for urinary incontinence. Okay, because right now, again, you have to insert a catheter to urinate each time or have your caregiver do it for you, which is, I mean, it's difficult from a privacy and dignity standpoint, but also leads to a lot of infection, courses of antibiotics. So if you can avoid that with just turn on your smartwatch, and yeah, that's really— would be fantastic. And so that's an open study now that we're, we're keen to make some progress on and learn from. Uh, we're also using it for blood pressure regulation and mobility for Parkinson's disease patients. And then finally, we're combining it with the BCI for upper limb and lower limb function. So all of those things. As a company, we're, we're really focused on the near-term things, so commercializing ArchiEx and getting through this pivotal study for blood pressure with ArchiM because that would result in an FDA approval and broad availability.

Yeah.

And in the meantime, we, we're very fortunate that with the support of grants, we're able to advance these other pipeline indications, learn from them, see which of them have legs, and then we'll invest in our capital in those and bring those forward in the future. And as I said, we have grant funding from the, my, from the Christopher Reeve Foundation, but also the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, US Department of Defense, We've received DARPA funding in the past, European Innovation Council. And these are really, really important sources of funding because we are trying to do a lot for a scale-up company. But, but the community needs us to do that.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, you know, you were, you were right to just to caution me a little bit on some of the setting expectations and things.

I still feel badly about that. I didn't mean to. No, you really shouldn't step up there.

You should know you shouldn't at all. I mean, so because I think about this a lot and it's Ashlee Vance. You know, part of the reason— well, I'm interested in this field broadly, but then, you know, when I went and saw this stuff in person, I mean, there is this, like, miraculous element to it, I have to say. But then, you know, not long after that, a lot of things rush through your head. And I'm sure more so for the patients than for me, but, like, you can walk again, but you can't walk like you used to.

Right.

You can take take a certain number of steps. These are people that have lost a ton of muscle, you know, it's really hard work.

It requires a lot of rehabilitation.

And then what I always think about a bit is like, oh, I mean, because on the one hand, yes, it's like miraculous. And then I try to put myself in their shoes a little bit and it would be like, it's like I would just be thinking of what's next, what, you know, how much further can I go and things like that. And so just kind of wanting more and more and more, you kind of get in this situation where obviously I haven't gone through it, so I shouldn't speak for people, but this is what I imagine in my head. And so I think you're right to just to like set expectations of— I just think it's fascinating.

Yeah, I feel in a way protective of the community of people with paralysis and their families because we, we had 60 Minutes come over.

Yeah.

You know, Anderson Cooper came over on it on his for a weekend on his vacation, actually, because he was fascinated by what we were doing. Doing. And, and he aired the main segment, but I implored him, please give some attention to some of these other things that, that really are important to people with paralysis. And so they posted a 60 Minutes overtime segment. But you'd be surprised at how, in a way, angry people are when they see things on 60 Minutes of people walking and so on, because it's just, um, until it becomes realistic and accessible for them them, you know, just— they just don't want their, their hopes to get up, right?

Right.

So I, I feel like we have to develop technology for them and, and help solve problems for them, but also protect their, their emotions. Yeah, that way. So that's where that was coming from.

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But the good news is things are out, you know. First time in human history there's an FDA-approved device that can improve your hand strength and sensation. Yeah. And, and if you go on social media, for example, you see videos from clinics all over the United States. You know, I've moved my finger for the first time in 30 years. And, and, and that's what we want to do. And, and the blood pressure indication is the first that we're pursuing with the implantable device because that can impact everybody, you know, without the need for rehab and building back muscle mass and, and balance and so on. So we feel like that's a really good place to start, and then we can stack onto that mobility, urinary incontinence, some of these other recovery targets. Yeah, as they become ready.

What, why is it that, why, why do we have, I, again, I'm sorry, I don't know what the number is, 12 to 20 BCI startups. You guys are the clear poster child in the spinal realm. Why, why has there been, maybe I don't know the field as well as I should, but you know, why does it feel like there's been less investment on the spinal side or competition or? I mean, I see why there's interest in the BCI part, but this other stuff seems so fascinating as well. Yeah.

Okay. Complex question.

Yeah.

I think that— You're probably like, I got plenty of competition. No, no, no. I don't have a lot of competition, but I think what you're talking about is, I think the question that you're asking in a polite way is why has so much capital flowed into these BCI platform companies, whereas we'll say an ordinary amount of capital has flowed to Onward.

That was more eloquent than I did. Yes. That is what I was asking.

So I, you know, we're a European company, first of all, even though I'm American guy, you know, born and bred in the Midwest. Um, um, so that's, that's one thing. Um, we're also a listed company because when I got there in 2020, we had to raise capital fast and, and, and I listed the company, which was good. We raised 3 years of capital, but that really narrows the aperture. You need a, a, a fund, a VC or, or growth fund that can invest in a European listed company. Having said that, we've raised raised a lot of money relative to other European medtechs. Yeah, um, we raised about, uh, gosh, I'm going to use euros here. I hope I don't make the audience's heads—

we have a smart audience and ChatGPT.

Okay, so about €80 million in the, in the IPO in 2021, and then in 2024 another €70 million, and then last year another €50 million. But that's what it takes to develop sophisticated technologies in multiple platforms like this. And we're still spending far less than other medtech companies that are doing less than we are. Our people are so mission-driven, and they work with such intensity that we're able to do a lot with, with less. Um, so I think you're going to help with that, actually. Like, me being here in the belly of the beast of Silicon Valley, you, you're helping to expose our story to traditional tech.

What is final, uh, competitors, man?

Well, I mean, I, I, I don't fear competition, you know. We have a lot of expertise and IP, by the way. Um, yeah, I should mention we have over 300 issued patents and 10 FDA breakthrough device designations. So like, really innovative company. We've taken advantage advantage of our first mover status here. But, but yeah, I think a lot of people just aren't aware of us and of the opportunity. The other thing is these BCI companies, I think, have positioned themselves as platform companies. And, and, and whether it's for marketing purposes or whether it's substantive, you know, they've got ties with Apple and, and Nvidia, and so it really smells like tech. And it has the promise of, you know, let's talk about data rates and, and augmenting human performance by fusing, which is a meet and machine Yeah, I think you like to say some of them pitch themselves basically as eventually a consumer tech. Exactly. But, but all of them for now are chasing locked-in syndrome and ALS, which is 30,000 people.

Yeah.

Okay. So that's just not what we're about. We're not about, okay, we're building this platform that can eventually, you know, work with computers. We're like, can we help people with spinal cord injury and movement disabilities function better? Yeah, that's all we care about. And in, in, in the case of BCI, we think, yeah, the BCI might help us in that perspective. Pursuit. Yeah, our expertise is understanding how to stimulate the spinal cord to restore movement and other functions, and the addition of a BCI may make that more effective. To be determined with proper clinical studies at scale, by the way. Yeah, so I just— I always want to make sure we don't get overhyped here.

It's a totally valid point. I was just talking about this with— oh, I'm trying to remember, um, the another guest in BCI land. I mean, I, I do suspect we're about to run into a problem, which is that Neuralink is undoubtedly fine because they basically have infinite capital, you know. But I think, I think we are going to run into this problem where there was this wave of these startups. To your point, all of them really are medical devices at the moment. That a good chunk of them are trying to pitch themselves as, as broader tech companies. And I think the gap between number of years of, of being a medical device to that, uh, more consumery endpoint is going to be a very long period of time. And you have to have, you know, tens of millions of dollars per year to survive that gulf. And it's just, it's really hard for me to see how many the I think Silicon Valley has this habit of you want to bill yourself as, I'm not, I'm not a car company, I'm a technology company. And, and, you know, it's smart, that's how you get more money. But then things can become difficult on certain timelines. And so I, I feel like there's going to be, uh, I think there's gonna be a lot of, um, the wheat and the chaff are getting, get separate.

Well, I think that's one of the benefits of being— you know, we're a public company.

Yeah.

And, and so we're listed on Euronext and we also have a US ADR. But being a public company, you know, your fundamentals, your performance are exposed to scrutiny. Yeah. Everything we do is, is rigorously disclosed on like a private company, which is really, you know, you're valuing the dream or the hype or whatever number people want to put on you. I'm not gonna say which CEO it was, but one of these BCI CEOs says, oh yeah, we're gonna need $500 to $600 million to bring this to market. It's like, okay, well you have a recording device. Device, and there'll be 5 or 10 other recording devices. So what makes yours worth 5, you know, half a billion in investment? What can it do that the others can't do? Because ultimately that's all they are is, at least today, recording devices. Now again, your former guest, Summer, talked about Gen 2 devices and that, but okay, I mean, for the next 10 years or 15 years, it's the Gen 1 devices that are going to matter. So personally, I don't care how that all develops. I don't mean that in a coarse or cynical way. It's good that there are a lot of different recording platforms out there. And again, if they can record with a lot of resolution and they're less invasive and they help our platform and they help us develop therapies that help people like Julie and Michael and, and Elizabeth and, or whomever, that's great. That's all we care about.

Yeah. Yeah. And when you say recording, I mean, the, the thought here is you would want these devices ultimately to do two things. One is to record the data out, and the other is to, to stimulate, to, to send signal in. In, whether that's to stimulate movement or in the more futuristic sense, which I don't think anybody fully knows how to— well, I know nobody knows how to do this yet, but to put ideas, put download kung fu, things like that. But you want this bidirectional.

Yeah, we right now we don't do any of that because we're only stimulating the spinal cord. So after spinal cord injury, the spinal cord and the nervous system is really intact, but it's not receiving signals from the brain. So we're stimulating on the other side of the injury and sending instructions that way. And that's our expertise. We use the brain recordings just to, to get movement intention, to make the movement restoration more natural. Um, there are— you can envision, again, I don't want to get too complex for the audience here, but you could envision also amplifying the intent to move at source, you know, especially for incomplete injury, and using that in combination with spinal cord stim. That might wind up being effective. And you've had other guests that are talking about stimulating the brain to address psychological disorders or maybe to address epilepsy more effectively. Fine, fine. That's not our thing. But that's where things could go.

Yeah. Well, okay. So you mentioned some of the intellectual property here, and I feel like we'd be doing two people a disservice if we didn't talk about some of the roots of all of this. There's a gentleman named Gregoire Courtine He's very charming. He's quite handsome, if I can say so.

He's got nothing on you.

Come on, Ashlee Vance.

He's just French. He dresses better than you do.

He's got something on everybody, I think. And, you know, for a while— well, he's Swiss-French.

No, he would tell you he's not Swiss. He's not French. He's Bourgogne. He's from Burgundy.

But for a while, studied at UCLA and was doing research.

Married an American woman. Yeah.

And he was working with mice. And rats. Yeah, rats. And was in this BCI land and, and was, was doing his experiments and then kind of found out that he could, he could figure out how to stimulate their spine in this, this the right way, the right pattern that you need to kind of control and the movement. And that really was the beginnings of a lot of this, right?

Oh, he, he, he gets a lot of credit for this. I mean, I hope that that Grégoire and his principal collaborator, uh, Jocelyne Bloch, who's chief of neurosurgery at the local hospital in Lausanne. I hope they win the Nobel at one— at some point. Um, but indeed, yeah, he, while at UCLA, um, did a lot of work understanding how to restore the ability to walk in, in rats. And then he became a full professor at EPFL, which is like the MIT of Switzerland.

Super cool place. Yeah.

And, uh, and did a lot of additional work. But it was really when he met Jocelyne Bloch and that he, I think, separated himself from a lot of neuroscientists because she enabled him to do— start doing this work in humans.

And she's a surgeon. She is.

She is what's called a functional neurosurgeon. So it's a neurosurgeon that's very comfortable with device therapy and stimulation therapy. So they do a lot of deep brain stimulation implants, pain stimulators for using spinal cord stimulation. So for her, this is a very comfortable field.

I think the first female neurosurgeon in Switzerland.

Yeah, yeah, she's hard to— she's got some, some moxie and some, some getup. Yeah, I mean, yeah, she is the boss in her OR.

She is.

And she is also stylish.

Yes, I was gonna say, just, just like Gregoire. I mean, she's, she's like superstar, you know, very charismatic, extremely bright, just super charming. And then I, I find their relationship fascinating. I mean, they're, they're like this pair, right? You've got the researcher and the surgeon bringing, bringing his things to light, you know, out into the real world.

And they do everything together.

They do.

If they get a speaking invitation at a scientific symposium or a conference, always together.

Yeah.

At the podium.

Yeah. I remember we were coming out to film, and I usually like to just have one person purely for, um, actually it's very pragmatic, it's just lighting, lighting. And, and usually I'm on camera doing an interview, and so having 3 people gets awkward, but they insisted.

Yeah, it's just the chemistry, and it's just, it's, it, it all, the magic happens when together.

She always says her English isn't as good.

And meanwhile, it's fantastic. It is, it is fantastic. But, but that's the origin story, is that they, they determined how to stimulate the spinal cord to restore movement in people after paralysis. But there was then no technology capable of delivering that therapy, of stimulating the spinal cord in the way that they envisioned. So they started a company to develop purpose-built technology, and that's the origin of, of Arc Eye and Onward Medical. Yeah, it had a different name back then, but yeah.

Yeah. And they really are fantastic. I've been to her house. She has the best view you could—

Oh yeah, right on Lake Geneva.

Yeah. Unbelievable. She's got a pool.

Swiss Alps in the background.

Yeah.

But her husband is also a very accomplished kind of restorative surgeon after trauma to the face and neck. So they're a power couple in the Swiss area and everything they have is very well deserved.

He's a wonderful host when you're at his house as well. And okay. So, you know, again, I don't want to give people false hope at all, but I mean, just as a thought exercise for a second, I mean, let's, let's play out the most optimistic scenario. You know, when I, when I see people moving again, when I see what this technology can do, it has a limited number of electrodes at the moment. My head immediately is like, let's do more electrodes, let's get the best BCI. What would that look like? And then what's the next step after that? I mean, is that even possible? Here, or are we already kind of tapping out the best that you can do? Or when you're— totally don't want to overhype this, but like when your mind's eye is looking at where this goes, what do you see in 10, 20, 30 years?

Well, first, I mean, if you're a person with paralysis and you have impaired upper extremity function, there are clinics in the US you can go to and very likely you can get some response. That's the really good news. And that's never been the case in human history. And then when in a couple of years, if you have some blood pressure dysregulation, we hope that that's available as well, or you can participate in the ongoing clinical study. So those are a couple of options that have never been available before that can truly help people.

Like life, life-changing. Yeah.

And then we want to follow that with clinical studies for, for mobility. With and without a BCI. You're asking me now to fast forward, but thanks for letting me ground a little bit.

No, no, no, it's good.

But our BCI now is what I would describe as an MVP, minimally viable product. Even though we're highly innovating around the therapy, we try to use sort of proven technology that we know because this is implanted. It's a very hostile environment. We know it's going to work. You know, it's a responsible way to introduce new technology and especially in these folks who, who have some fragility to them by nature. But you can certainly envision, um, because right now the system has an outboard computer and, you know, it's got to communicate things wirelessly to the computer, which uses AI to determine where in the brain the signals initiate and, and so on and so forth. We'd like to have a fully implanted system, very low latency, you know, operates at the same speed as your, as your nervous system. And all of that is possible in the future, but I think, again, taking the responsible approach, we know we can restore movement with spinal cord stimulation. We think the addition of the BCI will make that movement restoration more effective. We have to do large-scale studies to confirm that. But the addition of the BCI has to offer enough incremental advantage to justify a brain surgery. Yeah, the risk and expense. So, I mean, we got to put the patients or the people people first, you know, and not fall in love with the technology. Am I hopeful, and do I expect the BCI technology is going to be impactful? Absolutely. But we got to demonstrate that.

What about just on the spinal implant itself? I remember there was a point in time when, when, like I mentioned, Elon was paying attention to what you guys were doing, and suddenly Neuralink got very interested in a spinal implant. And, and I would have discussions with their researchers, and they're like, well, we think you should go deeper into the spine spine. And Neuralink always wants to come deeper, which comes with all these cost-benefit type things where, yes, you get closer and closer to the motor neurons, to the neurons, but you're doing more damage to the tissue and increasing the risk. But that was their general feeling at the time. I hang out at Neuralink a lot. They don't tell me everything, but I don't hear them talking about spinal stuff as much anymore. But is there, you know, is there a path where Even just on the spinal implant, like, does it make a difference if we add tons more electrodes, if we, if we do take the risk and we go deeper, or are you of the opinion that there's little benefit?

First of all, I, it's, it's nice to hear you're hanging out at Neuralink. Ashlee, you're perfectly welcome to hang out at Onward. I think we probably have better coffee and better food and, and we have mountains nearby. So, you know, know, grab your bride and your kids and come on over.

You guys do have like the best— you are in the best spot.

Yeah, I mean, right in the center of Lausanne with the cathedral. Um, in any case, as I said before, yeah, I mean, if you're a technologist, you can start really pushing things forward. But I'm a medtech guy. I know things can fail. Implants can fail. Yeah. And that has catastrophic consequences because you have to explant devices and you have expose people to another surgical procedure. You know, this happens with pacemakers and defibrillators and so on. So this is why I said, yes, we're innovating around the therapy, how we deliver stimulation and where, but the hardware itself is not revolutionary. You know, this looks a lot like a pacemaker.

Yeah.

And this looks a lot like leads that are used for pain.

We talked about it really quick, but that is going to get installed like a pacemaker.

Yeah. But in the abdomen. In the abdomen. Exactly right. Small pocket is made under the skin.

Delivering signal and charging.

And then this dispatches electrical impulses through this lead, and then this lead has several platinum iridium electrodes.

Yeah, wait, can you flip it around for a second? Oh, here, I'm gonna hold it. And, and depending on where we put these electrodes, um, actually I'm going to go here, then that is, is controlling the functions we were talking about.

Yeah, like for Julie, for blood pressure. Professor Courtine has found the exact spot in the spinal cord that controls vascular resistance. So if a person has low blood pressure, stimulate, the, the blood vessels constrict and therefore increase blood pressure to a more normal range. So we want to put this lead in that thoracic spinal cord region in a very precise way. This lead looks a lot like leads that are used to manage pain today. Yeah, so implanted in hundreds of thousands of people. Our lead is a bit wider. The electrodes are placed a bit differently because we're trying to capture a different part of the nervous system. But we know this platform is proven and durable and is unlikely to fracture or break. So this is where you get the medtech mentality.

Yeah.

Versus the tech mentality.

Okay. Yeah. And I butted in, but I mean, that's what you were kind of saying is that, you know, this works. This is so— okay. Okay.

So I hear what you're saying, but like, like, oh yeah, but let me answer your question. Would we benefit from more electrodes? Absolutely. Um, do you want to penetrate the spinal cord? Absolutely not. You know, you don't want to do anything to interrupt conduction that way. So I don't want to speak for what happened at Neuralink. I know nothing about what's going on within those four walls. But, um, but their fundamental technology, this robotically delivered, uh, penetrating thread thing, Yeah, ain't going to work in a spinal cord.

Yeah.

So they would have to develop a new platform for spinal cord stim, navigate our IP and know-how and so on. I think if anything, if they were interested in restoring movement in this population, they would just partner with us and they would send us their signals or instructions and then we would use those to inform our spinal cord stim. Okay.

Okay. So, okay, so you grew up in the Midwest. You were—

Oh, now we're doing the bio.

We are.

Isn't the bio supposed to be up front, Ashlee Vance?

You know. Okay.

All right.

I don't know where it calls to me. Okay. The— you worked in, in biotech land. You were at Medtronic for a number of years, and then, and then a couple other companies, and then, and then end up at Onward. I know you'd lived in Europe in the past, and you enjoy it there. When I go there sometime— okay, because, you know, when I was filming the episode, and as part of getting to know you guys, it's been really cool to go to the, to the universities in Switzerland, EPFL and CTH and— oh no, ETH. I'm sorry. And it's been really cool. I mean, it's the really impressive researchers, facilities, incredible. You know, the country is putting all this money into science. It's especially in biotech, medicine, robotics, incredibly impressive. However, you know, is a feeling I get. I mean, it's just slower. It's just a little less aggressive. It's, um, and I'm not— this isn't necessarily like Swiss specific. I, I kind of get this.

Just Europe in general.

Yeah, different spots.

Yeah, I think that Europe's universities and, and, um, the research ecosystem is outstanding. It was, uh, you know, the, the education is so inexpensive there. You can get, uh, university degree for like 1 or 2 €1,000 a year tuition, and you can continue and even get your, your PhD without incurring massive student debt that's going to hamstring you for decades like I had. Um, uh, so all that is good. And also the, um, the local governments do support fledgling enterprises, and the universities are also supportive. They use like the Stanford model, and, and they distribute royalties back to the department and the professor. The, the real gap there is it just isn't the same access to innovation capital. There is not the well-developed VC community. Um, and so, um, that, that takes a lot of time.

Why is that? I, I think about this all the time. I mean, there are a lot of rich people in Switzerland.

There really are.

They happen to make a—

it's like, I'll talk about Europe in general, in general. But you know, in Switzerland, even like when we were making the decision where to, where to go public, The Swiss stock market is called the SIX. I say, hey, you know, let's check out the SIX. I called UBS, says, hey, what do you think? We're here and we've got something really innovative. And the SIX is basically an exchange for cash flow generating businesses like Nestlé, Novartis, companies like that. So it just, it isn't part of the mindset. And that's cultural all through that DACH region, which is like Germany, Austria, Switzerland. They want safe, stable investments. You get a little bit more entrepreneurial attitude in the Benelux, a little bit more in Scandinavia and the UK, but that's really it. And then also, people by their nature are just more conservative, more risk-averse. Maybe that comes from having world wars on their territory. I really don't know what is the origin of that psychology. And so we try to actually hire Americans for our leadership team that comfortable living and working in Europe. So we have that risk-taking urgency drive, but we also were respectful of the European mentality. And so it can be hard to recruit leaders who are that way.

Yeah, I mean, I think about this a lot because I make a tech travel shows to go visit all these places. And then the, the UK, you're right, they take a little more risk. It is shocking to me when you— the the fantastic researchers I have met from Cambridge and Oxford who are doing Imperial that you could compare with anywhere in the world. And then I start ticking off the startups that have come out of all of this and you do okay if you're in pharma, really.

Yeah. A lot of exit via M&A.

Yeah. But then, you know, outside of that, it's like, it's like Dyson and Arm and then you're—

Oh, in tech.

Yeah. And you're kind of done and it seems almost impossible. Impossible to me, or it's just such a self-own on some, some level. Um, although you're right, I mean, I mean, it's a nice way of life there. People aren't just sort of like working themselves to death and falling into all this debt and everything here. But I, I always, I did wonder, like, as an American who's been going back and forth and lived both lives, and you're trying to compete against the Valley to some degree, and you're trying to push this, this tech forward, like, do you find it frustrating?

Or, you know, actually, people at Onwork work extremely extremely hard.

Yeah.

Um, but I think, you know, that's not because of me necessarily, some— because I'm some great leader. I, I think it's— if this was an ordinary company, they wouldn't do it. But, um, they see that what you've seen with Julie and, and Michael and all the others whom we're helping, and they, they are really driven by the mission. And, uh, so they work weekends, they work nights. I would put up— I put the Onward team up against any company in the world in terms of commitment and workload and work velocity. You know, last year alone we had 2 FDA approvals, a European approval, an IDE, a financing. I mean, we get a lot done with 120 people. But that's just, you know, that's all intrinsic. That's the want to, which maybe is more natural in Silicon Valley than it is in Europe. But it doesn't mean it can't happen in Europe. It's happening here at Onward.

Yeah, we did. When you did the 60 Minutes piece, does that still have as notable of an impact as it might have 10 or 15 years ago? I have no idea of like the reach of 60 Minutes these days.

Could you— broadcast television?

Yeah. Yeah.

So more people saw it than you would think. Okay. And actually with us, our investors like that.

Yeah.

You know, it's just, okay, this European company is getting attention on a global stage. It really can go all the way. So it's certainly beneficial. But I mean, it's not like back in the day when one-third of the US, of the Americans watch CBS News and Walter Cronkite. You know, everything is very much fragmented. Yeah. I mean, you're going to build that kind of following here at Core Memory, but not everybody's going to do that.

Hopefully even bigger. You know, there's— I mean, I know they run their overtime and everything on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's more of a following on YouTube than it does.

I meant this in a very genuine way.

Yeah.

What was the firsthand experience of doing this in 2025?

Well, what I tell you is The honest— the thing that really surprised me about 60 Minutes, if you want to talk about that, is I think they've had so much scrutiny and the lawsuits and everything else, they fact-checked like crazy. I, I mean, we probably had, not exaggerating, 30 phone calls after the filming asking question after question, and then they validated that from multiple people. Me, they'd ask the same questions of Gregoire and and the patients whom they interviewed, like this was next level. And I've done quite a bit of media in my day with this and other companies, you know, NBC News, CNN, whatever. This was next level fact-checking and diligence, which is burdensome for the company. I could tell you.

It does take a lot of time. That's encouraging, I feel like.

Yeah, no, it was high integrity. I hope I don't anger half the population by saying that they did it in a really rigorous way.

Yeah. And you think— I mean, you— I don't want to put any pressure on people. You mentioned the Nobel Prize for Grégoire and Jocelyne. You think that is in the realm?

I do, because they're making so many discoveries that are going to impact people with movement disabilities. It's not just this. They have many other things. They've got a biological repair initiative. They're identifying the neurons responsible for movement restoration and other functions. So they're really trying to understand the mechanisms down to a cellular level.

Yeah.

And, um, and so I hope they get it. They, they deserve it. Um, but, uh, you know, I think our job is to help them scale what they're doing.

How much attention do you pay to things like that, that Facebook, the Meta device that's come out where it originated with the startup called Control Labs, which had a watch-like device that sits on your wrist and it's looking at your motor neuron activity, and now they've translated this into some consumer watch? There is this— I've been following this for years. I mean, the idea that you could control your computer in different— what, your computing devices in different ways in the years coming. I mean, do you think, do you think stuff like that— I don't know, do you think about this stuff? Do you think it's also kind of maybe being oversold? Or you think just knowing what you know about this technology in the body that these things make sense?

So I think you have to be super focused to run a company like this and make it successful. So all I care about is technologies that can help the people that we're trying to serve, and everything else is, is noise and a distraction. Um, that's why, I mean, it's genuinely helpful to listen to your podcast because I hear about things I otherwise wouldn't hear about. Um, but, um, that— I am not a category expert at all. I'm an Onward expert.

Yeah, yeah.

And I'm a, I'm a, uh, and I, and I learn whatever I can from the clinicians in my field and talking to the patients and their families. That's where I— that's the most productive consuming of information and thought processing that I do.

Yeah. Okay.

I waste time with sports and hiking.

Have you gotten into European sports?

You know, rugby's pretty cool. Yeah, rugby's pretty cool. That's super entertaining. There's the soccer, the football. I mean, I know I don't have a lot of time for that. You know, when I— if I'm not working, I I try to just stay fit. Yeah, let's do some hiking. It's just maintain energy and stamina and try to be a good husband.

Well, you are fit. You're— I remember you're always biking to our meetings and things like, like this.

Yeah, I try to walk wherever I can. I try to avoid elevators and escalators. And, uh, and then Lausanne, as you know, is very hilly. Yeah. Um, uh, I'm— the reason I'm hesitating is I don't want to drop the chalet word, which is an insider inside joke prior to the recording. But, you know, We are close to the mountains and so it's easy to get out in nature and forest bathe, which is really important and get the heart beating.

Okay, well, I want to be respectful of your time. If somebody were to visit Switzerland, I don't know, do you have any special spots that might not be obvious to the usual tourist?

Well, Switzerland's really interesting. It's one, well, let's say half German and one quarter French and one quarter Italian. So it depends on sort of where you— what you dig. I personally like the southern half, which is the French and Italian influence, because you get the orderliness and cleanliness and efficiency of Switzerland, but a little bit better food, a little bit more joie de vivre. So for me, that's, that's a bit more interesting.

So where, like Lugano?

Exactly.

Yeah, of course. That's the spot.

Lugano is fantastic if you want Italian food and Switzerland where everything works. Yeah, but Lausanne is also amazing. That's a smallish city that has everything that you would want.

Yeah. Yeah. I've been to Lugano. I hung out with Jürgen Schmidhuber. Do you know who he is?

No, but I wish I had his name. That's a cool name.

Wow. So Jürgen, he's, he's an AI godfather. He, he was maybe 2 or 3 years ago. There were 3 guys that won the Turing Award, which is kind of computer science's Nobel Prize, is Geoff Hinton, Yann LeCun, and Yoshua Bengio and then Jürgen Schmidhuber. There was a controversy that he was, he was left out of this because he's been working in Lugano for, for decades and coming up with all sorts of AI advances. And then he sort of comically, um, at conferences is not shy about when somebody else is presenting a paper about standing up.

Oh, challenging it in front of everybody.

Like, I invented this 25 years ago. You're not, you're not citing it correctly. He's very German. He's very, yeah, you need to cite everything. And it's, it's called Being Schmidhuber'd. Oh wow. And I, I went to Lugano and I hung out with him for 2 days. It was one of the most interesting, fun 2 days of my life. And so I have a soft spot for Lugano. We, there's a research institute there. Um, there's some sort of like aperitif or liqueur that is made out of artichokes. Cynac, I think it is. And, uh, it was this rich Italian Italian who came up with this, and then he created like an AI robotics institute on the back of all this.

Oh, the wealth.

Yeah, yeah, it was such a weird story, this whole thing. I loved it, every, every bit of it. So anyway, then I got a soft spot for Switzerland. Then I, I got to— I went to Zermatt. Yeah, I was testing—

place to ski.

Yeah, yeah, I did a helicopter simulator that was invented by a Swiss startup, and I did that for a couple hours and then we went to Zermatt and I got to fly an actual helicopter around the Matterhorn off my 2 hours of training.

Boring life of Ashlee Vance.

It was good. So Switzerland is already a very, very special place.

It's high on your list.

Yes. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for coming on. I do hope that if anyone hears this, obviously, who knows?

I hope somebody hears it.

Well, people will hear this, but anyone who's listening, who knows somebody who could benefit from this type of technology. Actually, I do hope the word gets around.

Yeah, by the way, we do have a registry on the website if people are interested in learning more or potentially participating in one of our studies.

Oh, that's great.

Okay. They can complete that and indicate what their interests are, and then they give us permission to then share that information with one of the investigational sites who will then assess their suitability for the research protocols.

And is this on the Onward side or? It is, it is. Okay, okay. That is fantastic to know. Mm-hmm. Um, so, well, thank you so much for coming out. I'm glad, um, I'm sorry you have to suffer through the frivolity of JPM, but I'm glad it was an excuse to bring you out. Oh, I completely agree.

Yeah, I appreciate it. And our website, it'll be on your, in the notes, but it's onwd.com. So it's onward, but not all spelled out. It's onwd.com.

We will put a link, but yeah, no, that is, that is good to know. And, and well, thank you. Thank Thank you so much for coming. I really appreciate it.

I enjoyed it.

Yeah.

I'll come back if you, if you'll have me.

We, we will absolutely. And then we will, we will have to have Grégoire and Jocelyne on here, or I'll have to go. We'll have to, we'll have to just take the cameras to them. Um, cuz they, they would be a kick on this thing. Their thing. Yeah, for sure.

I don't know what you'd have to do. I think they'd probably share one mic.

Yes.

You'd have to modify the, the whole production here to, to add another chair.

We've talked to people, but I think you're right. They would make it easier. They would share.

I think they would.

Um, all right. Thanks so much.

All right. Thanks, Ashlee.

Core Memory Podcast is hosted by me, Ashlee Vance, and/or Kylee Robison, or both of us together. It is produced by me and David Nicholson. Our theme song is by James Mercer and Jon Sortland, and the show is edited always by the Jon Sortland. Thank you so much. To Brex and Ewan Ventures for all your support. And thank you most of all to everybody for listening or watching. We love you. Please leave us a like, a review, a subscribe, all those tremendous things. Thank you, and we'll see you again.