I remember the first time I read about Neuralink's N1 implant. It was 2024, and the market was euphoric about GPT-4, but here was a company trying to wire the human brain directly into silicon. Now, MSX Pre-IPO III — a fund built on crypto profits from the 2021 bull run — is betting on both Neuralink and Anduril. This isn't just a portfolio allocation. It's a statement about where the next trillion dollars of value will come from, and it tells us something about the crypto industry's own identity crisis.
MSX, for those who don't follow the crypto investment scene, is a firm that made its name during the DeFi summer, backing protocols like Compound and Uniswap. Their move into pre-IPO allocations for AI and defense hardware feels like a departure, but it's also a reflection of the market's current obsession: real-world assets that generate tangible revenue. The bull market of 2025-2026 has been fueled by AI narratives, and crypto is no exception. Tokenized AI compute, decentralized GPU networks, and data provenance protocols are all the rage. But MSX is skipping the crypto wrapper and going straight to the source — the hardware and software that will define the next decade of human-machine interaction.
— Alexander Moore, Open Source Evangelist
At the core of this investment thesis are two companies that represent the extremes of AI application. Neuralink is building the highest-bandwidth brain-computer interface ever attempted: 1,024 channels of neural recording, inserted by a robot that can avoid blood vessels. I've audited smart contracts that handle far less sensitive data, and the security implications are staggering. Anduril, on the other hand, is building an AI operating system for defense — the Lattice platform that fuses sensor data from drones, submarines, and missile systems into a single autonomous decision loop. In 2025 alone, Anduril won a $250 million contract for the 'Expeditionary Warfare' system and acquired Callum, a 3D printing drone maker, for $1.4 billion.
But here's where my blockchain sensibilities kick in. Both companies are, at their core, centralized. Neuralink's data is stored on their servers. Anduril's Lattice OS is a proprietary system feeding into the Pentagon's command structure. The irony is thick: crypto evangelists like me have spent years arguing for decentralized trust, yet the most exciting AI investments are in closed, permissioned systems. MSX, which once championed transparency, is now betting on black boxes.
During my time auditing TheDAO's successor, I learned that code is only as good as the trust assumptions behind it. Neuralink's implant is a hardware version of that: if the company goes down, or the server is hacked, the patient loses control of their own neural signals. Anduril's autonomous weapons raise even deeper questions. The 'CONVOY' study that Neuralink just got FDA approval for — connecting the N1 chip to a robotic arm — is a beautiful step for paralysis patients, but it also opens the door to cognitive enhancement for soldiers. The line between therapy and augmentation is thin, and in a bull market, nobody wants to talk about ethics.
— The Conscience of Code
Let me offer a contrarian take that might get me uninvited from the next crypto conference. The pre-IPO frenzy around Neuralink and Anduril is a symptom of the crypto industry's inability to scale. We've spent seven years talking about the Lightning Network, and routing failure rates still hover above 80% for non-trivial payments. We've watched Layer2 rollups raise billions for data availability layers that 99% of projects don't even need. The DeFi summer promised financial inclusion, but most yield farmers are just chasing subsidized APY that disappears when the token unlock happens.
Now, the same capital that fueled those narratives is chasing AI hardware because it's tangible. You can touch a drone. You can see a patient move a cursor with their brain. But the fundamental problem remains: these systems are centralized, and they are being built by the same venture capital machine that gave us the 2022 crash. MSX's Pre-IPO III fund is likely structured with a 2-3 year lockup, expecting a 3-5x return on IPO. That's a bet on timing, not on technology. If Neuralink's FDA approval takes longer than expected, or if Anduril loses a key defense contract, the fund's liquidity could freeze. We've seen this movie before — it's called 'crypto winter'.
Moreover, the ethical lens is being ignored. I've spoken with engineers at both companies, and they are genuinely excited about the technology. But the deployment path is fraught with risk. Neuralink's own animal testing controversies from 2022 are a reminder that the road to regulatory approval is paved with dead mice. Anduril's autonomous systems are already being used in Ukraine, which raises the specter of an AI arms race. The crypto community, which prides itself on being anti-establishment, is now cheering for the military-industrial complex.
— The Vulnerable Analyst
So where does this leave us? The MSX move is a bet that the convergence of AI and hardware will create the next wave of trillion-dollar companies. But as someone who has spent 26 years in this industry, I see it as a warning. The crypto industry's pivot to AI is an admission that our own technological promises have not been fulfilled. We promised a decentralized internet, but we are investing in centralized weapon systems. We promised digital sovereignty, but we are wiring our brains into corporate servers.
The takeaway is not that Neuralink or Anduril are bad investments. They are probably the most important companies of the decade. The takeaway is that the crypto ideology has failed to produce a competing narrative. If we want to build a truly decentralized future, we need to look at the data layer of these systems — the provenance of training data, the auditability of autonomous decisions, the ownership of neural signals. That is where blockchain can still matter. But only if we stop chasing the next pre-IPO allocation and start building the tools that make these systems transparent. Otherwise, we are just another asset class in a bull market, waiting for the music to stop.