Win Mega Millions, Help A French Company Implant Tiny Robots In Our Brains

Fair warning: We here at Lottery Geeks are absolutely 100% addicted — and we don’t use that term lightly — to the Apple+ TV show Severance. So we may be chatting about it more than is statistically expected.

If you’re not watching it, stop reading this right now, take what would’ve been enough money to buy five Mega Millions or Powerball tickets, get Apple+ TV, and come back after you devoured the 11 episodes so far.

OK! Welcome back. 

As you no doubt noticed— and very, very minor spoiler from the first season ahead — one of the more outlandish sci-fi aspects of the show is the brain implant for the severance process.

I mean, please: We are so far away from injecting stuff directly into a human brain and …

Wait, hold up.

Dig this: Mega Millions on Friday night? It’s worth an estimated $28 million. And for the same price, you can double the venture capital money that just poured into a French company named Robeauté.

And what does Robeauté do? Oh, they’re just planning to inject rice-sized microrobots into the brains of humans, according to Fortune. They just got a check for $28 million, and plan on testing their microrobots on us livestock, er, humans, next year. Just think what they could do with double the money!

Of course, Mega Millions is worth $28 million because nobody won Tuesday night. The numbers pulled were 27, 30, 56, 64, 65, and the gold Mega Ball of 22. Nobody matched all six, and nobody matched all five white balls either, ergo, there were no million-dollar winners.

Lottery Geeks estimates nearly 8 million tickets were sold for Tuesday’s drawing.

Powerball the larger of the two modest prizes

Saturday night’s Powerball jackpot is jacked up to $46 million, with a $20.5 million cash value. 

Wednesday’s winning numbers — 5, 6, 27, 40, 49, and a red Powerball of 5 — also did not yield any new millionaires, as nobody matched all five white balls.

Lottery Geeks estimates 7.4 million tickets were sold for Wednesday’s draw.

Tickets for either lottery cost $2, with most states offering the multiplier option — which impacts any prize won except the jackpot — for an additional $1.

Both Powerball and Mega Millions are legal in all states except Alabama, Alaska, Hawaii, Nevada, and Utah. Tickets for both draw games are also sold in Washington, D.C. and the U.S. Virgin Islands. In Puerto Rico, customers can buy tickets for Powerball, but not for Mega Millions.

All-time biggest jackpots

Here is a list of the all-time top 10 U.S. lottery jackpots:

1. $2.04 billion, Powerball, Nov. 7, 2022, won in California
2. $1.76 billion, Powerball, Oct. 11, 2023, won in California
3. $1.6 billion, Mega Millions, Aug. 8, 2023, won in Florida
4. $1.59 billion, Powerball, Jan. 13, 2016, won in California, Florida, and Tennessee
5. $1.54 billion, Mega Millions, Oct. 23, 2018, won in South Carolina
6. $1.35 billion, Mega Millions, Jan. 13, 2023, won in Maine
7. $1.34 billion, Mega Millions, July 29, 2022, won in Illinois
8. $1.33 billion, Powerball, April 6, 2024, won in Oregon
9. $1.22 billion, Mega Millions, Dec. 27, 2024, won in California
10. $1.13 billion, Mega Millions, March 26, 2024, won in New Jersey

And here’s the all-time top 10 by lump-sum cash value:

1. $997.6 million, Powerball, Nov. 7, 2022, won in California
2. $983.5 million, Powerball, Jan. 13, 2016, won in California, Florida, and Tennessee
3. $877.8 million, Mega Millions, Oct. 23, 2018, won in South Carolina
4. $794.2 million, Mega Millions, Aug. 8, 2023, won in Florida
5. $780.5 million, Mega Millions, July 29, 2022, won in Illinois
6. $776.6 million, Mega Millions, Jan. 22, 2021, won in Michigan
7. $774.1 million, Powerball, Oct. 11, 2023, won in California
8. $723.5 million, Mega Millions, Jan. 13, 2023, won in Maine
9. $621 million, Powerball, April 6, 2024, won in Oregon
10. $571.9 million, Mega Millions, Dec. 27, 2024, won in California