The war to lead the brain-machine implant market has begun. A Chinese company has just received a multi-million-dollar investment that threatens Musk’s supremacy.

The Chinese company NeuraMatrix has just announced a multi-million-dollar capital expansion that will allow them to bring their brain-machine interface to market. With this, China joins the global race led by Elon Musk to be the first to take this technology out of laboratories and into everyday life.

According to the Chinese technology website CnTechPost, NeuraMatrix’s technology is similar to what Musk is developing with Neuralink. It is also a chip implanted in the skull that allows wireless communication with machines.

CnTechPost states that NeuraMatrix’s implant has the same precision in signal acquisition as the American company’s device but with lower energy consumption, allowing it to be smaller by using a smaller battery. NeuraMatrix claims that its wireless transmission operates on the medical frequency band, a radio band reserved exclusively for medical use, instead of Bluetooth. This would enable a higher transmission of brain activity data.

The Chinese company also states that it has already secured agreements with several hospitals in Beijing, including Tsinghua Changgeng, Sanbo Neurosurgical Hospital, and Tiantan Hospital, which specializes in neurological diseases.

NeuraMatrix is composed of scientists trained at the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the University of Pennsylvania in the United States. According to the Chinese media, the company has just received its first major capital injection from the investment firm Matrix Partners China. With this funding, NeuraMatrix plans to start mass production of its products—expected to launch before the end of this year—and invest in new talent to develop additional technologies.

The Battle to Connect Mind and Machine:

Brain-machine interfaces promise to change the way we interact with technology. Instead of using keyboards, screens, or voice-activated microphones, we would communicate through a chip that receives our brain’s bioelectric signals and transmits them directly to machines.

This chip can be surgically implanted, integrated into external objects like bracelets or rings, or a combination of both.

Brain-machine interfaces have a clear medical application, as they allow real-time monitoring of brain activity, facilitating the study and treatment of neurological diseases. Musk has even described Neuralink as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires.”

This technology is already being tested: both Neuralink and NeuraMatrix are collaborating with various hospitals. The biggest hurdle will be regulatory approval, although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been working with Musk since July of last year.

However, telepathic communication with our devices is still a long way off. Neuralink’s goal is to interpret the electromagnetic signals of our brain—not just to control machines but also to cure paralysis, enhance sensory perception, or turn our brain into a high-fidelity system capable of streaming music directly.

For Musk, this technology will be the only way to enhance human mental capabilities and compete with artificial intelligence.

Neuralink’s chip was successfully tested on a pig, and Musk’s company is pushing hard to bring it to mass production. NeuraMatrix is doing the same, but they are not the only competitors in this race.

In China, Alibaba’s subsidiary Neurabuy has introduced a similar device aimed at e-commerce applications.

Meanwhile, Facebook recently announced a non-invasive brain-interface project in collaboration with the University of California, San Francisco. Unlike Neuralink or NeuraMatrix, this device would not require surgery. Instead, it would detect brain signals generated when a person tries to speak, enabling control of technologies like virtual and augmented reality or helping people who have lost their ability to communicate.

These are just a few examples of ongoing research in this field. Numerous companies and laboratories worldwide are currently developing this technology. The global brain-machine interface market, valued at €1.2 billion in 2020, is expected to exceed €3 billion by 2030.

There is little information coming from China regarding their advancements in this area, but it is clear that the country is investing heavily in these technologies. The race to be the first to dominate this market is intensifying.

Many challenges remain, particularly ethical and regulatory issues that must be addressed before neural implants become widespread. As highlighted in a Nature journal article last year, we still don’t know if the future will involve drilling holes in our skulls or if a bracelet connected to our spinal cord will suffice.

What seems clear is that this technology will eventually prevail, and the way we interact with machines will be completely transformed within just a few years.