Ripple founder Jed McCaleb will invest $1 billion to develop an AGI system based on human brain principles.

CycleProphet · 2026-03-27T14:29:50+00:00

Ripple and Stellar founder Jed McCaleb has pledged $1 billion through the Astera Institute to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI) based on human brain principles, believing that existing AI frameworks are insufficient for achieving full intelligence. He also committed $600 million to neuroscience research to advance brain-computer interface technology.

CycleProphet

2026-03-27 14:29:50

Abstract generation in progress

Deep Tide TechFlow message. On March 27, according to Forbes, Ripple and Stellar founder and crypto billionaire Jed McCaleb, through his nonprofit organization Astera Institute, pledged to invest $1 billion into research and development of artificial intelligence systems based on principles of the human brain, with the goal of achieving artificial general intelligence (AGI). McCaleb believes that today’s mainstream Transformer architecture can only perform a single function—“prediction”—and lacks key capabilities such as planning, decision-making, and motivation, so AI research needs to go back to the learning mechanisms of the human brain and start anew.

Astera Institute has hired former DeepMind executive Dileep George to lead AGI research, and plans to expand the team to 30 researchers this year and publish research findings openly. In addition, McCaleb has also pledged an extra $600 million for neuroscience research, including implanting brain–computer interfaces into mice, monkeys, and even humans to record patterns of neural activity and translate them into a new kind of AI architecture.

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