Singapore switched on a data center of 16 million living human neurons. It needs feeding every 3 days.

At the National University of Singapore, a rack of 20 Cortical Labs CL1 units is now running what NUS calls the world's first independently operated biologically integrated server rack: living human neurons, grown from stem cells on electrode-fitted silicon chips, taking part in the computation. The catch that makes it news is that the rack is alive. Technicians feed the culture a sugar, micronutrient and pH cocktail every three days, a gas mixer supplies CO2, oxygen and nitrogen as life support, and the neurons stay viable for up to about six months before they are replaced. Cortical Labs puts a CL1 at roughly 25-30 watts and a full 20-unit rack at 800-1,000 watts, against on the order of 10,200 watts for a single eight-GPU AI server. The headline figure of about 16 million neurons comes from 20 units x ~800,000; NUS also cites at least 200,000 per unit, so treat the total as reported rather than lab-measured. It remains a prototype. Proposed uses include drug discovery, neurological research, robotics, cybersecurity and fraud detection, and the partners have discussed scaling toward 1,000 units subject to regulatory and energy approval.