In a world engulfed by a pandemic, climate change, and social media controversies, technology still offers innovations that inspire us all. The soon to be introduced first artificial arm is such an innovation. Two-year-old startup Atom Limbs plans to offer their breakthrough limb technology next year—just completing its approximate $2 million raise from retail investors via crowdfunding—with $1 million raised in just the first hour.
Atom Limbs’ innovation story is about the convergence of technologies, bringing about a remarkable solution for those with disabilities. Their artificial arm combines breakthroughs in neural interfacing and human-scale robotics, enabling mind-controlled bionic limbs to have almost a full range of human motion. It attaches to users’ bodies through a revolutionary apparel system and amazingly the arm gives users a basic sense of touch.
Atom Limbs has high expectations for their product that they believe will disrupt the $800 billion prosthetic limb industry and change the lives of millions of individuals with disabilities. Co-founder and CEO Tyler Hayes gained the early backing of venture capital firm Village Global which has LPs that include Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. With development well underway Atom sought out the support of retail investors via the crowdfunding platform WeFunder to help ready their product for entry into the market next year.
“Atom is my 4th company and hopefully my last company — my life mission is to end disability,” said Tyler Hayes, Co-Founder, and CEO of Atom Limbs. “After selling my last company Bebo to Amazon and scaling a social platform to 1 billion users, I wanted to return to big, meaningful problems impactful to all of humanity. No one should have to live with a permanent injury or disability. We have reusable rockets and electric cars… it’s time for artificial limbs.”
In addition to being Co-founder and CEO of Bebo, Hayes was the Co-Founder & CEO of the health records app Prime. The technology empowers patients to instantly sync & freely transfer all their health records from all their doctors. Hayes was also employee #10 and Publisher Lead at Disqus, the Internet’s #1 commenting & community system, backed by Y Combinator, USV, and later acquired by Zeta.
In addition to high-caliber investors, Atom Limbs brought onboard prominent tech leaders comprised of executives from Apple, Tesla, Intel, IDEO, and Nike. Their backgrounds include bringing the first iPhone, iMac, and Tesla Roadster to market under the leadership of Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. Impressively, in aggregate the individuals are named on more than 1,000 patents and has created over $100B in value.
While the company was founded in 2019, the research and development of the artificial limb technology was conducted over a 15 year span. Its technology comes from proprietary patents and an exclusive partnership with Johns Hopkins University to consumerize the Modular Prosthetic Limb system. The project received $120M of R&D funding from the United States Department of Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
Atom has readied the artificial arm for the market next year by dramatically improving its prototype over 50 iterations. They also worked to reduce costs, while substantially increasing consumer value.
The company declares that it will give individuals who are living with physical disabilities an “unprecedented human experience” by providing them with the only prosthetic in the world that enables individual finger movement. Individuals are eagerly awaiting its launch as the limb technology startup has a growing list of participants for its beta testing that increases by 80% weekly.
