Elon Musk's brain implant startup Neuralink, which was valued at close to $2 billion in a private fundraising round two years ago, is now worth around $5 billion based on privately executed stock trades described to news agency Reuters by five sources with knowledge of the matter.

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Some purchases by bullish investors boosted the valuation in recent months, ahead of Neuralink's May 25 announcement that US regulators had approved a human trial on its brain chip, the sources said.

Experts have said it could take several years for Neuralink to secure commercial use clearance. Kip Ludwig, former program director for neural engineering at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), said he "optimistically" expected Neuralink to take at least 10 more years to commercialise its brain implant. The company also faces other challenges that include federal probes into its handling of animal research.

Following the trial's approval, however, Neuralink shares were marketed privately to investors in recent days at a $7 billion valuation, equivalent to $55 per share, according to an email seen by Reuters.

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Reuters could not establish whether the seller found buyers for that price. The email cited the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) approval of the clinical trial as grounds for the deal being "sweeter."

Neuralink executives and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk has expressed grand ambitions for Neuralink, saying its chip would allow healthy and disabled people alike to pop into neighborhood facilities for speedy surgical insertions of devices to treat obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia. He even sees them being used for web-surfing and telepathy. A Neuralink executive recently gave more modest short-term objectives, such as helping paralysed patients communicate through computerised text without typing.

The stock transactions at a valuation of around $5 billion have been carried out by shareholders such as employees and the company's early backers, rather than Neuralink selling new shares to investors. Such so-called secondary trades are an imperfect gauge of a company's value; their volume is thin and they lack the wider market consensus of a fundraising round or initial public offering (IPO).

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