Ripple and Stellar founders invest $1 billion to develop AGI through research on human brain mechanisms

CoinNetwork · 2026-03-27T14:33:04+00:00

Ripple and Stellar founder Jed McCaleb will invest $1 billion in developing AGI systems based on human brain principles and has pledged to invest $600 million in neuroscience. The Astera Institute is developing brain-computer interface technology and plans to expand to monkeys and humans. McCaleb emphasizes the current shortcomings of AI architectures and advocates for AI based on human brain principles, which are easier to understand and control.

CoinNetwork

2026-03-27 14:33:04

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According to Coinworld, Jed McCaleb, the founder of Ripple and Stellar, will invest $1 billion from his approximately $3.9 billion cryptocurrency fortune through his nonprofit organization, Astera Institute, to develop AGI systems based on principles of the human brain. Additionally, he has pledged another $600 million to the field of neuroscience. Astera Institute, located in Emeryville, is currently planning to record the neural activity patterns of mice performing tasks through brain-machine interfaces, and subsequently translate the research findings into new AI architectures, with plans to expand the subjects to monkeys and humans in the future. The AGI project at the institute is led by former DeepMind executive Dileep George, who plans to expand the lab to 30 researchers this year and publish research findings publicly. McCaleb believes that the current mainstream Transformer architecture only achieves capabilities in prediction and lacks key elements such as planning, decision-making, and motivation, necessitating the exploration of new directions. He stated that AI based on principles of the human brain is more likely to be understood and controlled by humans. Former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun’s new lab, AMI, has recently completed a $1 billion seed funding round to advance research on “world models” in a similar direction. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman holds a different view, believing that the realization of AGI requires multiple medium-scale breakthroughs rather than a single entirely new direction.

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