In March 2026, China's National Medical Products Administration officially approved the innovative product registration application for an implantable BCI hand movement function compensation system independently developed by BrainCo Medical Technology. As the world's first approved invasive BCI medical device, this milestone pushes BCI technology from laboratories into real-world commercial medical applications.

Amid this progress, a recent prediction by Max Hodak, co-founder of Neuralink and CEO of Science Corporation, has drawn widespread attention: he suggests that with the convergence of AI and BCI technologies, the first humans capable of living to 1,000 years old may have already been born. He believes that by 2035, humanity will possess entirely new technological means to reshape human-machine interfaces.

Stripping away these science fiction-esque visions, the underlying logic of the BCI industry is remarkably clear. Its core lies in the acquisition, amplification, filtering, analog-to-digital conversion, and decoding of brain signals—processes that all rely on high-performance application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and microelectronics manufacturing techniques. For the semiconductor industry, this represents an incremental market that cannot be ignored. As the boundaries between biology and physics blur, semiconductor foundational technologies are quietly reshaping the market landscape of this emerging sector.

01

The BCI Boom

The BCI field saw exceptionally frequent capital movements and increasing involvement from industry giants in early 2026. On March 13, Shanghai Step Medical Technology Co., Ltd. announced the completion of a RMB 500 million strategic financing round led by Alibaba, with continued participation from existing investors including Tencent. This marked the first time Alibaba and Tencent jointly invested in the same BCI company, signaling strategic layout (strategic positioning) by internet tech giants in BCI foundational hardware and clinical translation. Step Medical's cumulative financing over the past year now exceeds RMB 1.1 billion.

Meanwhile, overseas market leader Neuralink is accelerating its commercialization. After securing $650 million in Series E funding, Neuralink's valuation soared to $9 billion. By late 2025, Elon Musk declared 2026 as Neuralink's "mass production the first year (year zero)," planning to significantly increase BCI device output and achieve automated brain implantation via surgical robots. On March 2, 2026, Neuralink officially initiated an $8.2 million expansion project in Texas to prepare infrastructure for large-scale production. Additionally, Science Corporation, founded by Max Hodak, reached a $1.5 billion valuation after completing a $230 million Series C round. Its Prima retinal implant has successfully restored vision to approximately 40 blind patients.

Market data growth similarly confirms the sector's explosive potential. Mordor Intelligence projects the global BCI market will reach $1.27 billion in 2025 and $2.11 billion by 2030, with a CAGR of 10.29%. Global SMT's report focuses on more niche segments, predicting the neural implant semiconductor chip market will hit $8.53 billion by 2032. In China, CCID Consulting data shows the domestic BCI market reached approximately RMB 3.2 billion in 2024 and is expected to surpass RMB 3.8 billion in 2025.

This flurry of data and events indicates that BCI has moved beyond conceptual validation, officially entering the fast lane of industrialization and commercialization. The cornerstone supporting this transition is semiconductor technology, which continues to push physical limits.

02

Diverging Technological Roadmaps Among Companies

Notably, global BCI companies are showing significant divergence in technological approaches, largely driven by choices in semiconductor and microfabrication processes.

BrainCo opts for an epidural implantation route. Founder Xu Honglai explained in media interviews that BCI systems face an "impossible triangle": signal transmission must be fast and precise, surgical trauma minimized, and long-term safety and stability maintained within the human body. BrainCo's minimally invasive system resembles cochlear implants, with surgeons semi-suturing sensors onto the dura mater without direct brain tissue contact, effectively avoiding sensor migration risks. To date, BrainCo has completed 36 clinical surgeries, with cumulative system stability approaching 8,000 days. The longest-implanted patient has used the system stably for nearly two and a half years. This approach demands extreme requirements for chip packaging hermeticity and long-term reliability but relatively lower demands for electrode channel density.

Step Medical pursues an invasive flexible electrode route. Founder Li Xue stated that by implanting ultra-flexible electrodes, single-neuron signals within 100 microns can be precisely captured, obtaining high-quality single-neuron data needed to decode highly complex movement and consciousness patterns. This approach imposes stricter demands on semiconductor micro-nano fabrication—electrodes must be 1/100th the thickness of a human hair while ensuring long-term biocompatibility and signal stability.

Synchron takes a unique endovascular approach. Its core product, Stentrode, resembles a cardiac stent and is delivered through the jugular vein to the brain's motor cortex area via blood vessels, completely eliminating the need for craniotomy. This route presents unique challenges for chip miniaturization and wireless transmission capabilities.

The divergence in these three technological roadmaps essentially reflects the semiconductor industry's varying technical supply capabilities across dimensions: epidural routes test packaging and reliability, invasive routes test micro-nano fabrication and materials science, and vascular routes test miniaturization and wireless communication. Breakthroughs in each require deep semiconductor supply chain participation.

03

Semiconductor Technologies Reshaping Neural Communication

At its core, BCI technology enables bidirectional communication using the brain's neural interfaces. As Max Hodak stated, the brain is essentially an information-processing computer encased in the skull, with neural electrical impulses serving as its API (application programming interface). To precisely access these APIs, semiconductor chips represent the only viable hardware carrier (carrier).

Throughout the BCI signal processing chain—from acquisition, conditioning, and analog-to-digital conversion to main control management, wireless transmission, and decoding—specific chips are required at each stage. Among these, neural signal acquisition chips (specialized ASICs) at the top of the supply chain form the system's foundation, representing the highest technical barriers and greatest opportunities for import substitution.

Brain signals are extremely weak analog signals, requiring acquisition chips to perform high-precision amplification and filtering before digital conversion. This demands extremely high analog circuit design capabilities while balancing ultra-low power consumption (to reduce heat and extend implanted battery life) and ultra-low noise (to ensure signal quality). Take Neuralink's N1 Chip as an example: its sensor incorporates 12 custom ASICs, each integrating 256 independently programmable amplifiers. Through advanced flip-chip bonding processes, 3,072 channels are packaged within a mere 23×18.5 mm² area.

On the path toward higher channel density and smaller volumes, semiconductor manufacturing processes continue to push limits. In December 2025, Columbia University, Stanford University, and other institutions jointly published breakthrough research in Nature Electronics titled the "Biocortical Interface System" (BISC). This system integrates 65,536 electrodes onto a single CMOS silicon chip measuring just 50 microns thick—thinner than a human hair. Columbia University's Professor Ken Shepard commented: "Semiconductor technology made this possible, enabling computational power that once required room-sized computers to now fit in your pocket or even adhere to your cerebral cortex."

China's semiconductor industry is accelerating catch-up efforts in this field. The 8X-R128S4 high-throughput neural signal acquisition and stimulation chip developed by Hainan University's BCI Neural Engineering Team achieves 128-channel analog amplification and ADC integration. Companies like Chipintelli are also accelerating deployment of full-stack chips for EEG signal acquisition. The China Semiconductor Industry Association notes that chips represent the weakest link in China's BCI supply chain, long constrained by overseas suppliers like Texas Instruments for signal processing chips, creating urgent demand for domestic alternatives.

04

The "Shovel Seller" Opportunity in BCI

As BCI evolves from simple unidirectional signal acquisition toward bidirectional closed-loop and multimodal fusion, its demand for foundational computing power grows exponentially. When implantable devices need real-time processing of tens of thousands of neuronal channels with complex intention decoding, traditional microcontrollers can no longer meet requirements.

The entry of AI computing giants provides solutions to BCI's computational bottlenecks. In early 2025, implantable BCI leader Synchron announced deep collaboration with NVIDIA, integrating the NVIDIA Holoscan platform into its technology to enhance real-time AI processing capabilities at the edge. During March's GTC conference, Synchron unveiled Chiral, the world's first cognitive AI brain foundation model trained directly on human neural activity. This cross-industry collaboration makes clear: future BCIs will not merely be medical devices but core terminals for edge AI computing. Synchron's products already enable users to control Apple's iPhone, iPad, and Vision Pro devices through thought alone, without any physical movements or voice commands.

PwC's 2026 Semiconductors & the Future report identifies AI, autonomous driving, humanoid robots, quantum computing, and BCI as the five most promising and feasible emerging technologies, with semiconductors playing an absolutely critical role in their implementation. PwC predicts that AI will drive global semiconductor output value beyond $1 trillion by 2030. While BCI currently accounts for a small share of total semiconductor output, its growth rate and technological leverage effects cannot be ignored.

For the semiconductor supply chain, BCI's rise is creating new "shovel sellers"—companies supplying essential tools for the gold rush. Currently, upstream BCI hardware core components (high-precision electrodes, specialized neural chips, biocompatible material packaging) account for a tiny fraction of global industry value yet control the most critical bottlenecks. Analysis indicates that companies first to establish full-stack capabilities spanning biocompatible materials, specialized ASIC design, micro-nano fabrication, and high-density packaging—with scalable production of high-density, low-damage, long-life devices—will become the most stable infrastructure providers in this hundred-billion-dollar sector. The fact that companies like BrainCo have driven key hardware costs down by over 60% in three years demonstrates accelerating supply chain maturity.

Currently, China is accelerating construction of an innovation ecosystem integrating industry, academia, research, and medicine under initiatives like Shanghai's BCI Future Industry Cultivation Action Plan (2025–2030) and national "15th Five-Year Plan" forward-looking layout (positioning). In March 2026, the National Development and Reform Commission prioritized integrated circuits as the first of six emerging pillar industries, with strong policy support providing solid guarantees for domestic BCI chip breakthroughs. During China's 2026 Two Sessions, BCI emerged as a hot topic among delegates, with multiple proposals calling for increased R&D investment in core BCI chips and key materials.

05

Conclusion

The approval of the world's first invasive BCI medical device marks a substantive step forward in clinical applications. When 65,000 electrodes can be integrated onto a CMOS chip thinner than a human hair, and when AI models begin directly processing neural activity data, chip applications are expanding from consumer electronics and data centers into life sciences. For semiconductor companies, core chip design and foundational hardware manufacturing capabilities in this emerging hundred-billion-dollar market will determine who establishes genuine barriers to entry. Whether this technology ultimately enables humans to "live to 1,000 years old" may require more time to verify, but the silicon foundation supporting this vision has already begun laying.