From left to right: Professor Rickie Patani, Director of the Neurobiology Programme at the NUS Life Sciences Institute (LSI) and Chair of the Neuroscience Translational Research Programme (TRP); Jamie Khoo, CEO of DayOne; and Hon Weng Chong, Founder and CEO of Cortical Labs.
Credit: NUS
NUS Medicine, data centre operator DayOne and Melbourne’s Cortical Labs have unveiled a biological data centre prototype in Singapore, built from a 20-unit rack of neuron-powered CL1 computers. Cortical Labs puts each unit at about 25 watts and a full rack at 800 to 1,000 watts.
A rack of computers running on living human neurons has been switched on in Singapore. NUS Medicine, the data centre operator DayOne and Melbourne’s Cortical Labs showed the prototype to about 80 guests on 6 August.
The hardware is 20 CL1 units, which the partners describe as the first independently operated biologically integrated server rack anywhere. The neurons are grown from stem cells and cultured at the NUS Life Sciences Institute.
The argument for it is electricity. Biological computing is presented as a way to scale AI capacity at a fraction of the power that silicon servers demand.
The numbers are small in a way data centre people are not used to. Cortical Labs puts each CL1 at around 25 watts and a fully populated rack at 800 to 1,000 watts, so the Singapore installation draws about as much as a few desktop computers.
A conventional server rack runs to several kilowatts, and a high-density AI rack can pass a hundred. On that comparison the biological version is not competing on power, it is operating in a different unit of measurement.
What the announcement still does not give is the other half of the equation. There is no benchmark, no workload comparison and no figure for what the rack accomplishes per watt, which is the number that decides whether low power is an advantage or just a small machine.
The wattage also has to cover staying alive. Each unit runs pumps, gas mixing, temperature control and filtration to keep its neurons viable for up to six months, which is a maintenance schedule no silicon rack has to plan for.
Others make far larger claims for the underlying biology. Switzerland’s FinalSpark, which runs a remote platform of 16 brain organoids from Vevey, says its processors use around a million times less energy than digital chips.
Europe has been chasing the same efficiency goal in silicon. The Netherlands is assembling a neuromorphic computing hub around chips that imitate neurons without needing to be fed, which is one way to cut data centre demand without a biology lab attached.
Cortical Labs is clear about wanting customers rather than papers. Founder Hon Weng Chong says the prototype “shifts the conversation from research to commercial application,” naming drug discovery, humanoid robotics, cybersecurity and fraud detection.
The remaining question is what the rack can actually do. Investors are meanwhile funding a brain-inspired version of the same promise, which runs on electricity alone and has benchmarks to point at.
Correction, 21 August 2026: an earlier version of this article said each CL1 unit draws 850 to 1,000 watts and calculated the 20-unit rack at up to 20 kilowatts. That figure, published by Data Center Dynamics and repeated elsewhere, describes a full rack rather than a single unit. Cortical Labs says each CL1 draws approximately 25 watts and a rack draws 800 to 1,000 watts, and the article has been corrected and its conclusions revised.
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