A Silicon Valley billionaire is paying $10,000 to be killed so that his brain can exist preserved in the hope that it will one day be uploaded to a computer and then he tin can alive on digitally forever.

Sam Altman, 32, a tech entrepreneur , has paid to join a waiting list at Nectome — a start-up that promises to preserve your encephalon and then it tin can - hopefully, 1 day - upload information technology into a computer to grant your consciousness eternal life.

And the method, the company can confidently assure, is "100% fatal".

Only Mr Altman, who co-created the Y Combinator program which funds get-go-up companies, told MIT Technology Review that he'due south confident minds volition be digitized in his lifetime.

"I assume my encephalon volition exist uploaded to the cloud," he said.

And he is non alone. Twenty four other people take too paid to join a waiting list at Nectome.

The company essentially proposes to embalm your brain - while you are still alive - with the intention of uploading it to a figurer if or when technology permits, so that y'all can live digitally forever.

Netcome'southward chemical solution can preserve a body for hundreds or potentially thousands of years then i day scientists may scan your stored brain then it tin can be reborn equally a reckoner simulation.

Robert McIntyre is co-founder of Nectome, a company which aims to embalm brains - while people are nonetheless alive (

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Nectome)
Michael McCanna is Nectome's other co-founder, their company has already secured federal funding in America (

Image:

Nectome)

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But because the procedure requires 'fresh brains' the embalming chemicals demand to be pumped into the customer while they are even so live - effectively killing them.

"The user experience will be identical to physician-assisted suicide," Nectome's co-founder Robert McIntyre, a computer scientist, said.

Nectome'south storage service is not for sale nonetheless and at that place is still no bear witness that memories remain, or tin can be extricated from dead tissue.

Only the company already has a waiting list of futurity clients, ready to leap on the opportunity if or when the procedure becomes legal.

Tech entrepreneur Sam Altman is one of 25 people who have joined Netcome's waiting list to have their encephalon'south embalmed while they are withal live (

Paradigm:

Bloomberg)
Nectome aims to preserve brains - like this one pictured (

Image:

Nectome)

And it may exist bachelor sooner than y'all may think. Medically assisted suicide is legal in five U.s. states and Nectome has already secured a large federal grant for its inquiry.

It is collaborating with Edward Boyden, a top neuroscientist at MIT, and information technology has already preserved a pig'south brain so well that every synapse within it could be seen with an electron microscope - a scientific breakthrough that won it an $80,000 prize.

Sam Altman is confident that brains will be uploaded to the cloud within his lifetime (

Image:

Bloomberg)

Netcome said that the procedure would involve hooking upwardly a living customer to a machine which would pump them full of Nectome'due south embalming chemicals.

The visitor believes the process could particularly appeal to people with terminal illnesses.

Other Usa-based companies already offer cryogenic freezing, which preserve bodies after death in liquid nitrogen in the promise that future advances in medicine and technology will allow them to exist reborn.