First Data Center Powered by Living Human Brain Cells!
NUS Medicine, the medical school of the National University of Singapore, in collaboration with data center development firm “D1” and the Australian startup “Cortical Labs,” has unveiled a prototype of a bio-data center powered by living human brain cells, a move its creators described as the first of its kind in the world. The center is located within the university’s Institute of Life Sciences and comprises a rack of 20 computers that operate using human nerve cells cultured on silicon chips equipped with microscopic electrodes.
According to a report published by The Straits Times, technicians provide the cells every three days with a mixture of sugar, micronutrients, and pH-regulating solutions, while supplying them with a gas mixture of carbon dioxide, oxygen, and nitrogen to sustain their viability. These bio-cells remain functional for up to six months, according to Cortical Labs.
Each unit can accommodate approximately 800,000 human nerve cells, reprogrammed from adult skin or blood cells. Each unit consumes no more than 30 watts of power, including life-support systems—less than the energy used by a portable calculator—and does not require complex, energy-intensive cooling systems, unlike traditional data centers. In contrast, a single NVIDIA H100 processor alone can consume up to 700 watts, while the maximum power consumption of a DGX H100 server, which houses eight such chips, reaches approximately 10.2 kilowatts.
Hoon Wee Keong, founder and CEO of Cortical Labs, stated that this prototype “shifts the discussion from the research domain to commercial application.” He noted that suitable applications for this technology include drug discovery, humanoid robotics, cybersecurity, and fraud detection, where biological systems outperform traditional artificial intelligence in handling sparse or variable data.
The report indicated that renting computing resources from a single unit costs $2,200 per month, while the price of the unit itself is around $35,000. This development comes as Southeast Asia experiences a surge in energy demand, with power consumption for data centers projected to rise from 2.6 gigawatts in 2025 to 10.7 gigawatts by 2035.
