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China’s brain-computer interface industry is racing ahead Kate Park 8:00 AM PST · February 22, 2026 While Elon Musk’s Neuralink likes to say it’s “ pioneering ” brain-computer interfaces (BCIs), China’s BCI industry is already quietly moving from research to scale.
A new wave of startups is racing to commercialize both implantable and noninvasive BCIs, backed by stronger policy support, expanding clinical trials, and growing investor interest. So says Phoenix Peng, who has founded not one but two BCI startups. He’s a co-founder of NeuroXess, maker of BCI implants, as well as founder and CEO of noninvasive ultrasound BCI startup Gestala.
His belief in the potential of this market is founded on concrete action: Provinces such as Sichuan, Hubei, and Zhejiang have already set medical service pricing for BCI, speeding its inclusion in the national medical insurance system.
Over time, he foresees the technology extending beyond medicine “treating disease” to “human augmentation,” he said.
“I have always maintained that neuroscience and AI are two sides of the same coin,” Peng said. “They are destined for deep integration, realizing direct high-bandwidth connections between the human brain and AI. BCI will serve as the ultimate bridge between carbon-based and silicon-based intelligence. While this may sound distant, it represents an unimaginably vast market in the future.”
But over the next three to five years, BCI use is likely to stay concentrated in healthcare, with the market reaching multibillion-dollar scale as insurance coverage expands, Peng told TechCrunch.
In August 2025, China’s industry ministry and six other agencies released a national roadmap to further speed development of BCIs. The plan targets major technical milestones by 2027, common industry standards, and a full supply chain by 2030, with the goal of building globally competitive BCI companies and supporting smaller specialized firms.
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The second factor is vast clinical resources, including large patient pools and lower research costs that accelerate trials. China’s national health insurance means quicker commercialization once the state approves a device. This compares to the U.S. where even after the FDA approves a device, private insurers, as the main payers, must each individually do so.
Researchers have completed the country’s first fully implanted, wireless BCI trial — only the second globally — allowing a paralyzed patient to control devices without external hardware, per CGTN . Neuralink is the startup that completed the first such trial .
“In traditional electrical BCIs, Chinese firms have achieved clinical progress in motor and language decoding, spinal cord reconstruction, and stroke rehabilitation, with over 50 flexible implantable BCI clinical trials completed by mid-2025,” Peng said, adding that next-generation efforts are now moving toward whole-brain neural decoding and encoding, including ultrasound-based approaches such as Gestala ’s.
The third factor is China’s mature industrial manufacturing, Peng points out, spanning semiconductors, AI, and medical hardware, which supports fast R&D and prototyping. Finally, there is strategic investment in the market, with both state-led funds and private capital surging under national initiatives.
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