For what it's worth, based on my own research.
There does appear to be an Ovidiu Anghelidi, who was involved in large-scale simulations of the brain using a model based on Hodgin-Huxley equations. It was implemented on a distributed processing platform using BOINC, and it did hit the 700 billion neuron mark. (I have a citation that puts Anghelidi as the project leader a year earlier when it hit the 100 billion neuron mark.) It also appears that the quote in blue was in the original article, including the mention of Ovidiu Anghelidi.
Make of it what you will.
(picture unrelated)