The company Neuralink, founded by Elon Musk, in October 2025 plans to start clinical trials in the United States of a device capable of reading speech signals directly from the brain and converting them into text. This is reports Bloomberg.
The main goal is to help people with speech disorders after a stroke or with neurodegenerative diseases, in particular amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).
Company President DJ Seo said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted approval for the study under the Experimental Device Exemption. He explained that the new technology makes it possible to record what a person is trying to say or imagines that he is saying.
Neuralink is currently conducting five more clinical trials of implants that can control electronic devices, including computers and robotic prostheses, using brain signals. There are currently no commercial implants that would directly read speech from the brain.
The company is also considering the prospect of installing its device on healthy people by 2030, which will be an important milestone in the creation of consumer technology. According to Seo, in the future, users will be able to interact with large language models of artificial intelligence “at the speed of thought” and receive answers, for example, through headphones. Similar developments are already being tested by other scientific groups to restore speech in patients who retain the ability to think but cannot pronounce words.
The start of the tests in October was a postponement of the previous plan, according to which they wanted to start the implantation in the language cortex before the end of September. In addition to restoring speech, Neuralink is working on research into the treatment of blindness and Parkinson’s disease. By 2031, the company plans to implant 20,000 people every year.
