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China firms race to make brain-computer interfaces implant in minutes
StairMed has raised more than 1.1 billion yuan in the past year and tested a minimally invasive BCI delivery technique in sheep, with no human trials yet.
Chinese start-ups and researchers are racing to commercialize brain-computer interfaces that can be implanted via blood vessels in just minutes, as Beijing seeks to build home-grown players to compete with Elon Musk’s Neuralink, according to SCMP Economy.
StairMed Technology, a Shanghai-based company involved in the effort, is developing a minimally invasive delivery method that enters through blood vessels in the neck and guides the device through the vascular system directly into the brain, using the vein-like approach described by its co-founder Zhao Zhengtuo at the Global Health Summit in Hong Kong on Saturday.
The company says it has raised more than 1.1 billion yuan, about US$163 million, over the past year, with investors including Tencent Holdings and Alibaba Group Holding, which owns the South China Morning Post.
StairMed unveiled a program in December, in partnership with a research team at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, to insert BCIs into a targeted brain region and anchor them outside the vessel wall, and it has tested the technique on sheep but has not yet begun human trials.