China’s Brain Implant Startups Take On Musk’s Neuralink in New Tech Race
Despite a late foray into the brain technology industry, Chinese startups have made rapid strides in recent years to challenge US companies.
Shanghai StairMed Technology Co.’s brain-computer interface device that can pick up neural signals.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/BloombergAmerica’s leadership in the cutting-edge field of brain technology is being challenged as Chinese startups rise with the support of a full-throttle policy drive.
For years, US companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink Corp. have led the industry with state-of-the-art procedures implanting chips into patients’ brains. A wave of clinical trials by Chinese startups this year is shifting that narrative. A May video by Shanghai StairMed Technology Co. showed a paraplegic patient playing a computer game using only his thoughts, enabled by a coin-shaped implant comparable to the one used in Neuralink surgeries.