As reported by CNBC, Elon Musk’s neurotech startup Neuralink implanted its device in a human for the first time on Sunday. According to a Monday post from Musk on X, the patient is “recovering well”.
“Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer,” Musk wrote. “That is the goal.”
Neuralink received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration back in May and has been recruiting patients for the trial, as mentioned in their recent blog post.
The recent in-human clinical trial conducted by Neuralink is just one of several steps on the company's path toward commercialization. Medical device companies are required to go through several rounds of intensive safety data collection and testing before obtaining final approval from the FDA.
Despite this, Neuralink has not disclosed the number of human patients participating in its initial in-human trial, and the company has not yet responded to CNBC's request for comment on the procedure.
As a leading player in the emerging brain-computer interface (BCI) industry, Neuralink is perhaps the best-known company in this space, largely attributed to the high profile of its CEO, Elon Musk, who also heads Tesla and SpaceX. BCIs are systems that decode brain signals and convert them into commands for external technologies.
Other companies, such as Synchron, Precision Neuroscience, Paradromics, and Blackrock Neurotech, have also developed systems with similar capabilities.
Paradromics aims to launch its first trial with human patients in the first half of this year, while Precision Neuroscience conducted its first in-human clinical study last year. In 2021, a patient who received Synchron's BCI used it to post from CEO Tom Oxley's Twitter account.
It is still unclear which of these companies will be the first to reach the market. Nonetheless, it is clear that the race to market is heating up in the BCI industry, with several companies vying for the top spot.
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