These chips can help you live to be 1000 years old.
In March 2026, the National Medical Products Administration officially approved the registration application for an innovative product of the implantable brain-computer interface hand motor function compensation system independently developed by BrainCo Medical Technology. As the world's first invasive brain-computer interface medical device to be approved for market, this event has propelled brain-computer interface technology from the laboratory to real commercial medical scenarios.
In this process, a recent prediction by Max Hodak, co-founder of Neuralink and CEO of Science Corporation, has attracted wide attention: With the integration of artificial intelligence and brain-computer interface technology, the first humans who can live to be 1000 years old may have already been born. He believes that by 2035, humans will have new technological means to reshape the interface between humans and machines.
Stripping away these science-fiction-like visions, the underlying logic of the brain-computer interface industry is actually very clear. Its core lies in the collection, amplification, filtering, analog-to-digital conversion, and decoding of electroencephalogram signals, and all these links rely on high-performance application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and microelectronics manufacturing processes. For the semiconductor industry, this is becoming an incremental market that cannot be ignored. As the boundary between biology and physics begins to blur, semiconductor underlying technologies are quietly reshaping the market landscape of this emerging track.
The Explosion of Brain-Computer Interface
At the beginning of 2026, capital actions in the field of brain-computer interface were extremely frequent, and the trend of giants entering the market became more and more obvious. On March 13th, Shanghai Jieti Medical Technology Co., Ltd. announced the completion of a strategic financing of 500 million RMB, led by Alibaba, with old shareholders such as Tencent continuing to follow up. This is the first time that Alibaba and Tencent have jointly invested in the same enterprise in the field of brain-computer interface, marking the strategic layout of Internet technology giants for the underlying hardware and clinical transformation of brain-computer interface. So far, the cumulative financing of Jieti Medical in the past year has exceeded 1.1 billion RMB.
Meanwhile, Neuralink, the leader in the overseas market, is also accelerating its commercialization process. After completing a Series E financing of $650 million, Neuralink's valuation has soared to $9 billion. At the end of 2025, Elon Musk announced that 2026 would be Neuralink's "Year of Mass Production", planning to significantly increase the production of brain-computer devices and achieve automated brain implantation through surgical robots. On March 2nd, 2026, Neuralink officially launched an $8.2 million expansion project in Texas to prepare the infrastructure for large-scale mass production. In addition, after completing a Series C financing of $230 million, Science Corporation founded by Max Hodak has a valuation of $1.5 billion, and its developed Prima retinal implant has successfully helped about 40 blind patients regain their vision.
The growth of market data also confirms the explosive potential of this track. According to the prediction of Mordor Intelligence, the global brain-computer interface market size is expected to be $1.27 billion in 2025 and will reach $2.11 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 10.29%. The report of Global SMT focuses on more segmented fields and predicts that the market for neural implant semiconductor chips will reach $8.53 billion by 2032. In the Chinese market, data from CCID Consulting shows that the domestic brain-computer interface market size was about 3.2 billion RMB in 2024 and is expected to exceed 3.8 billion RMB in 2025.
This series of intensive data and events indicate that brain-computer interface has crossed the stage of concept verification and officially entered the fast lane of industrialization and commercialization. And the core cornerstone supporting this leap is the semiconductor technology that continuously breaks through physical limits.
Differentiation of Technical Routes among Different Enterprises
It is worth noting that current global brain-computer interface enterprises show significant differentiation in technical routes, and the underlying logic of this differentiation largely depends on the choice of semiconductor and microfabrication processes.
BrainCo has chosen the epidural implantation route. Its founder, Xu Honglai, pointed out in a media interview that there is an "impossible triangle" in the brain-computer interface system engineering: signal transmission must be fast and accurate, surgical trauma must be minimized, and the system must remain safe and stable in the human body for a long time. BrainCo's minimally invasive system is similar to a cochlear implant. Surgeons semi-suture the sensor outside the dura mater without directly contacting the brain tissue, effectively avoiding the risk of sensor displacement in the brain tissue. So far, BrainCo has completed 36 clinical surgeries, and the cumulative stable working time of the system is close to 8000 days. The patient with the longest implantation time has been using it stably for nearly two and a half years. This route places extremely high requirements on the packaging tightness and long-term reliability of the chip, but relatively low requirements on the electrode channel density.
Jieti Medical has taken the invasive flexible electrode route. Its founder, Li Xue, said that by implanting ultra-flexible electrodes, it is possible to accurately capture the signals of single neurons within a range of 100 microns, thereby obtaining high-quality single-neuron data required for decoding high-complexity motion and consciousness. This route places more demanding requirements on semiconductor micro-nano processing technology - the electrodes need to be as thin as one-hundredth of a hair, while ensuring long-term biocompatibility and signal stability.
Synchron has taken a different approach and adopted the intravascular interventional route. Its core product, Stentrode, is shaped like a cardiac stent and is delivered to the vicinity of the motor cortex of the brain along the blood vessel through the jugular vein in the neck, completely eliminating the need for a craniotomy. This route poses unique challenges to the miniaturization and wireless transmission capabilities of the chip.
The differentiation of the three technical routes essentially reflects the technical supply capabilities of the semiconductor industry in different dimensions: the epidural route tests packaging and reliability, the invasive route tests micro-nano processing and materials science, and the intravascular interventional route tests miniaturization and wireless communication. The breakthrough of each route requires the in-depth participation of the semiconductor industry chain.
Semiconductor Technology Reshapes Neural Communication
The essence of brain-computer interface is a technology that uses the neural interface of the brain for two-way communication. As Max Hodak said, the brain is essentially an information processing computer enclosed in the skull, and the electrical pulses on the nerves are the API (Application Programming Interface) of the brain. To accurately call these APIs, semiconductor chips are the only feasible hardware carriers.
In the entire signal processing link of brain-computer interface, from collection, conditioning, analog-to-digital conversion to main control management, wireless transmission, and decoding, specific chips are required to participate. Among them, the neural signal collection chip (special ASIC) at the uppermost reaches of the industrial chain is the cornerstone of the entire system and also the link with the highest technical barrier and the largest space for domestic substitution.
Electroencephalogram signals are extremely weak analog signals. The collection chip needs to amplify and filter them with high precision and then convert them into digital signals. This requires the chip to reach an extremely high level in analog circuit design, and at the same time, it must take into account extremely low power consumption (to reduce heat generation and extend the battery life of the implant) and extremely low noise (to ensure signal quality). Taking Neuralink's N1 Chip as an example, its sensor contains 12 customized ASICs, and each ASIC integrates 256 independently programmable amplifiers. Through the advanced flip-chip bonding process, 3072 channels are packaged in a tiny area of only 23×18.5 square millimeters.
On the path of pursuing higher channel density and smaller volume, semiconductor manufacturing processes are constantly breaking through the limits. In December 2025, institutions such as Columbia University and Stanford University jointly published a breakthrough study named "Cortical Biointerface System" (BISC) in "Nature Electronics". This system integrates 65,536 electrodes on a single CMOS silicon chip with a thickness of only 50 microns, which is thinner than a human hair. Professor Ken Shepard of Columbia University commented on this: "It is semiconductor technology that makes this possible, allowing the computing power that once required a room-sized computer to now fit in your pocket or even be attached to your cerebral cortex."
The domestic semiconductor industry is also accelerating its catch-up in this field. The 8X-R128S4 high-throughput neural signal collection and stimulation chip developed by the Brain-Computer Chip Neural Engineering Team of Hainan University has achieved the integration of 128-channel analog amplification and analog-to-digital conversion; Xinzhida and other enterprises are also accelerating the layout of chips for the entire link of electroencephalogram signal collection. The analysis of the China Semiconductor Industry Association points out that the chip field is the weakest link in China's brain-computer interface industrial chain, and it has long been restricted by signal processing chips from overseas suppliers such as Texas Instruments. The demand for domestic substitution is extremely urgent.
Opportunities for "Shovel Sellers" in Brain-Computer Interface
As brain-computer interface develops from simple one-way signal collection to two-way closed-loop and multi-modal integration, its demand for underlying computing power is increasing exponentially. When implantable devices need to process tens of thousands of channels of neuron data in real-time and perform complex intention decoding, traditional microcontrollers can no longer meet the requirements.
The entry of AI computing power giants provides a solution to the computing power bottleneck of brain-computer interface. At the beginning of 2025, Synchron, a star enterprise in implantable brain-computer interface, announced a deep cooperation with NVIDIA, introducing the NVIDIA Holoscan platform into its brain-computer interface technology to enhance the real-time AI processing ability of the device at the edge. Then at the GTC conference in March, Synchron even launched the world's first cognitive AI brain foundation model Chiral trained directly based on human neural activity. This cross-border cooperation clearly shows that future brain-computer interfaces are not only medical devices but also the core terminals of edge AI computing power. Synchron's products already allow implant users to control Apple's iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro devices through their thoughts without any physical actions or voice commands.
PricewaterhouseCoopers pointed out in its 2026 annual report "Semiconductors and the Future" that artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, humanoid robots, quantum computing, and brain-computer interface are the five most potential and feasible emerging technologies at present, and semiconductors will play an absolutely key role in the implementation of these forward-looking technologies. PwC predicts that driven by AI, the global semiconductor output value will exceed $1 trillion by 2030. Although brain-computer interface currently accounts for a relatively small proportion of the total semiconductor output value, its growth rate and technology-driven effect cannot be ignored.
For the semiconductor industry chain, the rise of brain-computer interface is giving birth to a group of new "shovel sellers". Currently, the core hardware components (high-precision electrodes, special neural chips, biocompatible material packaging) in the upstream of brain-computer interface account for a very small part of the global industrial value, but they control the most critical "choke points". Analysis points out that whoever can first complete the entire chain from biocompatible materials, special ASIC design, micro-nano manufacturing to high-density packaging and have the large-scale mass production capacity of high-density, low-damage, and long-life devices will become the most stable infrastructure provider in this hundred-billion-level track. The fact that enterprises such as BrainCo have promoted a reduction of more than 60% in the cost of key hardware in three years also shows that the maturity of the industrial chain is accelerating.
Currently, driven by the "Shanghai Brain-Computer Interface Future Industry Cultivation Action Plan (2025 - 2030)" and the forward-looking layout of the 14th Five-Year Plan, China is accelerating the construction of an innovation ecosystem with in-depth integration of industry, academia, research, and medicine. In March 2026, the National Development and Reform Commission listed integrated circuits as the top of the six emerging pillar industries. The strong support at the policy level provides a solid guarantee for the breakthrough of domestic brain-computer interface chips. At the 2026 National Two Sessions, brain-computer interface also became one of the hot topics discussed by deputies and members, and many proposals suggested increasing R & D investment in core chips and key materials for brain-computer interface.
Conclusion
The approval and listing of the first invasive brain-computer interface medical device mark a substantial step in the clinical application of this technology. When 65,000 electrodes can be integrated on a CMOS chip thinner than a hair, and when AI models start to try to directly process neural activity data, the application scenarios of chips are extending from consumer electronics and data centers to the field of life sciences. For semiconductor enterprises, in this emerging market worth billions of dollars, the core chip design and underlying hardware manufacturing capabilities will determine who can build real barriers. As for whether this technology can ultimately allow humans to "live to be a thousand years old", it may take a longer time to verify, but the silicon-based foundation supporting this vision has already begun to be laid.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Semiconductor Industry Insights" (ID: ICViews), author: Junxi, published by 36Kr with authorization.