Neuralink Completes World’s First Transdural Minimally Invasive Brain-Computer Interface Implant

On July 1, Elon Musk’s Neuralink dropped a bombshell by announcing the completion of the world’s first brain-computer interface surgery via dural implantation.

This global star enterprise in the brain-computer interface field posted a video lasting over five minutes on its social media account, publicly revealing for the first time the technical details of its transdural implantation surgery. The video sparked intense interest, attracting more than 250,000 views and nearly 1,000 comments within two days.

What is the significance of this milestone, and what does it mean for the brain-computer interface (BCI) industry? VCBeat communicated with experts in China’s BCI sector.

To understand the significance of epidurally implanted brain-computer interfaces, one must first understand how traditional invasive brain-computer interface surgeries are performed.

The dura mater, located directly beneath the skull, is the outermost protective membrane enveloping the brain, with a tough, leather-like texture. Traditional invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) implantation surgery requires resection of a portion of the dura mater to expose the cerebral cortex for electrode implantation. This approach causes significant tissue trauma and carries higher risks, such as infection or cerebrospinal fluid leakage.

Traditional implantation requires resecting a portion of the dura mater to expose the cerebral cortex (image sourced from the official video)

Taking Neuralink as an example, its brain-computer interface implantation still requires creating a coin-sized opening in the dura mater.

The new plan at the beginning of the month completely skipped this step.

The new approach preserves the white portion of the dura mater (screenshot from the official video)

“From day one, we have been striving to make the surgery faster and less traumatic. Preserving the dura mater rather than removing it represents a significant step in this direction.” In the video, an engineer displayed a coin-sized cranial incision site, with the tough, leather-like dura mater covering the cerebral cortex remaining intact.

“This procedure completely eliminates the step of incising the dura mater. Our robotic implant device can directly penetrate the dura mater with electrode threads, implanting them into the brain itself.” The Neuralink team provided a detailed demonstration of the engineering challenges associated with this surgical approach.

The first challenge is puncture.

The toughness of the dura mater prevented the original implantation needle from reliably penetrating it. The Neuralink team slightly increased the needle diameter, enabling the electrodes to penetrate the dura mater. To validate the design, the team even developed an entirely new testing pipeline that used synthetic dura mater to simulate the thickness and puncture resistance of human dura mater, successfully completing hundreds of puncture tests.

The second challenge is real-time intraoperative observation.

Preserving the dura mater presents a significant challenge to surgeons, as this opaque barrier obscures the visualization of cerebral cortical vasculature and prevents accurate estimation of cortical depth.

To this end, Neuralink’s robotics team redesigned the entire optical system. First, they introduced indocyanine green (ICG) fluorescence angiography, wherein the fluorescent dye is administered intravenously; under infrared illumination, the blood vessels fluoresce beneath the dura mater, enabling the robot to plan avoidance paths.

Secondly, to precisely measure the dynamically changing real-time distance from the dural surface to the cortical surface, the team introduced Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT) technology, utilizing laser for measurement.

In the video, the engineer demonstrates how the OCT module transmits laser light through optical fibers and then receives the light signals reflected from the brain to reconstruct three-dimensional images of brain tissue: “OCT enables us to measure the distance from the top of the dura mater to the cortex with high precision, allowing us to insert electrode wires into the cortex with exceptional accuracy.”

According to the introduction, in May 2026, with the assistance of Dr. Lozano at University Health Network (UHN) in Toronto, Canada, Neuralink completed its first transdural implantation surgery. The Neuralink R1 robot led the entire implantation process, with each electrode thread being inserted in approximately 1.5 seconds.

Neuralink stated that the simplified surgical procedure is easier to standardize and replicate, with further enhanced safety, marking a key advancement toward automated, large-scale brain-computer interface implantation surgeries.

As of early this year, Neuralink’s high-throughput N1 implant with 1,024 channels had been implanted in 21 human subjects cumulatively. Participants achieved mind-controlled cursor and robotic arm operation, as well as real-time speech synthesis. Meanwhile, clinical trials, including the Blindsight program for vision restoration, are progressing concurrently. These advancements have enabled Elon Musk to previously announce that mass production of the device and a near-fully automated surgical process would commence in 2026.

However, the challenges are equally unavoidable. In early cases of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface implantation, partial micro-retraction of electrode wires has led to a reduction in effective channels. Whether transdural implantation can ensure long-term in vivo stability for more than two years remains to be answered by larger sample sizes and longer observation periods.

Domestic brain-computer interface practitioners have highly praised this progress.

Zhao Zhengtuo, founder of Jieti Medical, stated to VCBeat that invasive brain-computer interfaces represent the technological route with the highest signal quality and the greatest potential for future applications. Neuralink’s recent progress marks the first time globally that brain electrode implantation has been achieved in human clinical trials without incising the dura mater. By preserving the integrity of the dura mater, this approach further reduces surgical trauma and infection risk, thereby enhancing the clinical feasibility of invasive brain-computer interfaces.

He further stated that advancements in implantation technology will drive invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) toward greater minimally invasiveness, while preservation of the dura mater facilitates standardization and reproducibility of surgical procedures. This will help accelerate clinical adoption and large-scale deployment of invasive BCIs, removing surgical bottlenecks to their transition from laboratory settings to scaled clinical applications.

Zhang Yutao, a partner at Heying Brain-Computer Interface Fund—the first brain-computer interface (BCI) fund—summarized the significance of this progress from the perspectives of application barriers, clinical benefits, commercialization, and industry evolution.

First, the new surgical procedure will lower the barrier to invasive brain-computer interfaces.

Traditional invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) surgery relies heavily on physicians’ experience, making standardization difficult and thereby limiting commercialization. The new surgical approach employs robots to automatically pierce the dura mater with electrode wires and implant them into the cerebral cortex, avoiding high-risk manual steps. This significantly reduces overall surgical complexity and inter-individual variability, laying the foundation for the widespread adoption of BCI implantation in general neurosurgical practice.

Secondly, clinical benefits were significantly improved.

Zhang Yutao stated that the dura mater serves as a protective barrier for the brain, and its intact preservation is of significant importance, as it can reduce the incidence of postoperative complications such as cerebrospinal fluid leakage, intracranial infection, and meningeal adhesion. Meanwhile, compared with traditional surgical procedures that require dural removal, the new technique causes less trauma and enables faster postoperative recovery. According to the current results, the first trial participant was able to control the computer cursor using thought alone on the day of implantation, thereby enhancing patient acceptance and accessibility, and expanding the eligible population for invasive applications.

Furthermore, he believes that this clinical progress will accelerate the commercialization of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface.

This surgery validated the feasibility of Neuralink’s long-standing “minimally invasive + automated” technical approach, reducing operative time from the traditional eight hours to under one hour and significantly lowering costs. Coupled with standardized surgical procedures, this advancement will substantially shorten the translation cycle for invasive brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) from clinical trials to routine clinical practice, addressing the longstanding bottleneck where technologies are effective but not replicable. Furthermore, this surgical procedure lays a safety foundation for next-generation implants featuring higher channel counts and bidirectional closed-loop modulation, propelling the entire sector from the technology validation phase into the stage of large-scale commercial deployment.

Finally, the direction of industry evolution was projected.

Zhang Yutao believes that this surgery significantly reduces surgical trauma without compromising signal precision, marking a substantial advance in balancing implantation depth, signal quality, and surgical risk. Meanwhile, the procedure has accelerated the integration of semi-invasive and invasive approaches, clarifying a minimally invasive-centric evolutionary pathway for the global brain-computer interface (BCI) industry. This will drive synergistic breakthroughs and applications in technologies such as flexible electrodes, intraoperative imaging, and surgical robots, while enabling a re-evaluation and redesign of the safety boundaries and engineering implementation strategies for invasive BCIs.

Neuralink’s latest progress also serves as a spur to the current brain-computer interface industry in China.

From last year to this year, the development of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) in China has been remarkable. In particular, in March this year, NeuroXess’s NEO implantable BCI system received approval as a Class III medical device, becoming the world’s first commercially available invasive BCI medical device.

Interestingly, NeuroXess’s brain-computer interface medical device also follows a “semi-invasive” approach, employing an 8-channel electrocorticography (ECoG) scheme with electrodes placed epidurally without penetrating the cerebral cortex. According to publicly available information, NeuroXess has completed 32 cases in multicenter clinical trials.

Currently, NeuroXess is pursuing an IPO and may become the world’s first publicly listed brain-computer interface company.

Bo Rui Kang is not the only competitor in this field; other domestic brain-computer interface (BCI) companies, including Jieti Medical, BrainCo Technology, Zhiran Technology, and Nuanxinjia, have also made significant progress. In terms of the total number of clinical trial participants, Chinese BCI teams have collectively accumulated nearly 100 implantation cases, with some reports indicating figures that even surpass those of Neuralink.

Of course, a gap in technical depth still exists between the two parties.

Zhang Yutao stated that the mainstream approach in domestic clinical settings is currently semi-invasive, with fully invasive methods still in the early stages.

Among these, the core strategy of semi-invasive approaches lies in balancing safety to facilitate rapid commercial deployment. BrainCo’s regulatory approval further demonstrates that China is globally leading in the clinical approval and commercialization progress of semi-invasive pathways. Intracortical invasive technologies are mostly in the early stages of prospective or registration clinical trials, with a focus on flexible electrodes and low-trauma implantation techniques.

“From the perspective of progress alone, the overall development in China is broadly aligned with the international pace represented by Neuralink,” he summarized.

He believes that, in terms of core technological gaps and a panoramic perspective, China’s invasive brain-computer interface (BCI) technology has also established unique advantages through differentiated strategies: “China ranks among the global leaders in the clinical translation speed of semi-invasive BCIs, medical device regulatory approval, and the scale of scenario-based implementation. Meanwhile, Chinese teams generally adopt more conservative, low-risk technical pathways, accumulating their own technological expertise and advantages in long-term safety, patient accessibility, and localized applications such as Chinese-language neural decoding.”

He also stated that, using Neuralink’s recent surgery as a benchmark, several core issues still need to be addressed in China.

“The most critical factors are the number of channels and electrode fabrication technology. Neuralink has achieved stable clinical implantation with 1,024 channels, whereas domestic invasive products remain in the 128–256 channel range. This order-of-magnitude difference in channel count determines the precision of neural decoding, indicating that there is room for improvement in the micro/nano-fabrication accuracy and long-term in vivo biocompatibility of China’s high-throughput flexible electrodes.”

“Second, implantation robots and surgical techniques. Neuralink has achieved fully automated transdural puncture implantation, with a surgery time of only one hour and a target cost reduced to $5,000. In China, surgical robots are primarily used for auxiliary positioning, lacking sufficient automation and intraoperative multimodal image fusion capabilities. The core technique of transdural puncture has not yet been breakthrough, still requiring traditional neurosurgical manual dural incision. This indicates that there is significant room for improvement in the development of automation for domestic surgical robots and cost control of consumables.”

“Finally, in terms of signal decoding and system integration, Neuralink has more mature engineering expertise in real-time decoding of high-channel neural signals, wireless transmission, and low-power integration. Clinical trial participants have already achieved smooth cursor control, gaming operations, and text input. In China, improvements are still needed in areas such as channel count and implantation depth to enable finer motor control and language decoding.”

Zhao Zhengtuo also believes that Neuralink’s progress is worth learning from for China’s brain-computer interface (BCI) industry: “Frankly speaking, no team in China has yet performed minimally invasive transdural implantation surgery at a comparable level. Jieti Medical is developing a fully automated BCI surgical robot and exploring various technical pathways to achieve equivalent minimally invasive implantation outcomes, with clinical application expected by 2027.”

While China’s brain-computer interface (BCI) technology still has room for improvement in light of Neuralink’s recent surgical breakthroughs, China may hold a competitive advantage in terms of policy support. This is evident in the approval and standard-setting for BCI medical devices, the inclusion of BCI in the “15th Five-Year Plan” as a key future industry direction, and the initiation of pricing approvals by medical insurance programs in multiple regions.

This sector may be one of the few hard-tech arenas in the past decade where China and the United States have developed differentiated competitive landscapes on both technological and commercial fronts. Neither side is simply replicating the other, nor can either easily overtake the other through disruptive shortcuts. In the coming years, both parties will enter a phase of validation, and the ultimate outcome remains uncertain.