Neuralink

Neuralink is a brain-computer interface company founded in 2016 by Elon Musk and eight scientists and engineers, and its stated purpose is "creating a generalized brain interface to restore autonomy to those with unmet medical needs today and unlock human potential tomorrow." Its device, the N1 Implant, is a fully implantable, wireless, cosmetically invisible interface that records neural activity through 1,024 electrodes distributed across 64 flexible "threads," each thinner than a human hair and placed independently in the brain by the company's R1 surgical robot. The first product built on it is called Telepathy, which aims to let people with paralysis control computers, phones and robotic limbs using their thoughts alone.

The company's work runs almost entirely through registered clinical trials. Neuralink is the listed sponsor of studies on ClinicalTrials.gov: the PRIME study in the United States at Barrow Neurological Institute and the University of Miami; CONVOY, which extends implant control to an investigational assistive robotic arm; CAN-PRIME at University Health Network in Toronto; UAE-PRIME at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi; GB-PRIME at University College London Hospitals and The Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals; and VOICE, a communication-restoration study at UT Southwestern Medical Center. In January 2026 Neuralink announced 21 participants enrolled in trials worldwide, and said it has maintained a record of zero serious device-related adverse events.

Neuralink is pre-commercial: it has no approved product and declined to disclose a revenue range in its most recent Form D filing with the SEC. Its funding has come entirely from private financing rounds, which total roughly $1.24 billion across the rounds it and its filings have disclosed, most recently a $650 million Series E announced on 2 June 2025 that TechCrunch reported valued the company at about $9 billion pre-money. The regulatory path ahead runs through the FDA's Breakthrough Device programme, which granted the company designations for Blindsight, its vision-restoration programme, in September 2024, and for speech restoration in May 2025.

The trajectory is one of accelerating implantation and widening indications. Neuralink says its crew of participants grew from three people in 2024 to multiple participants per month in 2025, and that signal quality improved in 18 of the 20 participants who followed the first. Its stated next steps are to increase the implant from 1,000 to 3,000 electrodes, improve thread retention so signal is preserved over time, and insert threads directly through the dura mater to make the surgery less invasive. Beyond cursor control, participants have reached typing speeds of up to 40 words per minute by imagining finger movements, and the VOICE study aims to push communication toward conversational speeds of 140 words per minute.