Forget Brain Implants — Your Tongue Is Already Wired In

Forget brain implants, your tongue is already wired in. That's chasing the next computer interface. They all kind of land in the same three places: your ear, your wrist, maybe a pen on your chest. But there's one company that actually ended up going somewhere where no one would ever look: inside your mouth. And yesterday they just opened up the product to the public. They're calling it the MouthPad, which is basically this custom fit retainer with a pressure sensitive trackpad at the roof of your mouth. So you slide your tongue for the cursor, you press on your palate to actually click. I think you like sip for the right click or something. And you know me, I wanted to look into the founders that built this thing. And what I found out is the company, Augmental, is actually an MIT Media Lab spinout. You know this lab, right? The one that created the hologram on everyone's credit card. Oh, and also spun out was Harmonix, which was the studio that brought us Guitar Hero. Go figure. But these founders, Tomas and Corten, they actually met back in 2012 at Berkeley. And Tomas told Corten when they met, hey, I'm going to make it to MIT Media Lab, however long it takes. And when he got there, he ended up spinning out with this interesting insight. A huge portion of your brain is actually used to control your tongue. There are eight muscles and most of them are actually slow twitch, so they barely fatigue. Now the story that everyone's telling about this company is all about accessibility. And for good reason. Over a hundred people with mobility challenges use it today. Some for over like 16 hours a day. Now they're finally hands free on their computers, even gaming with their friends, which is just like wild to see. But here's what I look at as an investor, right? Their waitlist is over 6,300 people. Surgeons, mechanics, lab technicians, pianists, boxers, parents. The boxer one, I kind of have questions about though. But the point is that none of those people are paralyzed. But the hands busy economy, that's the market. Oh, and they're not stopping with the mouse. Like just yesterday they launched what they call Vox, which is a pendant that actually picks up sound through the body. So you can like dictate through a whisper. Now I get it, a trackpad in your mouth sounds ridiculous, but so did a phone without a keypad. The frontier never looks obvious. That's what makes it the frontier. And again, if you like this sort of thing and want to stay close, join our community, Frontier, link in bio.