Neuralink Capabilities: What It Can Do Now and in the Future

• Neuralink participants use the implant to control computers by thought, type at up to 40 words per minute, and move robotic arms and wheelchairs.
• The VOICE trial is testing whether the implant can restore speech, and a participant spoke with a voice decoded from his brain in September 2026.
• Blindsight, a planned vision implant, and higher-channel devices are next on Neuralink's roadmap, but no Blindsight trial has started.

Everyone using a Neuralink implant today received it in a clinical trial, so the list of what it can do comes from the participants' own sessions and posts. Neuralink reported 21 participants on January 28, 2026, and Neura Pod's patient table lists 27+ publicly known patients as of October 2026.

Computer control and typing

The core use is moving a cursor and clicking by thought, which lets participants browse, study, play games, and work on a computer. Neuralink reports that its median participant reaches about 10 bits per second on its cursor test, and one set a brain-computer interface record of 11.32 bits per second in 2026, according to its October 2026 update. Able-bodied people using a mouse average about 8 to 10 bits per second.

Participants have typed at up to 40 words per minute by imagining finger movements on a keyboard, according to Neuralink's January 2026 update. Together, participants have streamed over 50,000 hours of neural data, and the first participant alone has used his implant for more than 9,000 hours.

Robotic arms and wheelchairs

In the CONVOY study, Alex Conley, patient 2, was the first to control an assistive robotic arm, and Nick Wray, who has ALS, used one to feed himself. Neuralink has also shown a participant moving a Tesla Optimus robot hand. In July 2026, Neuralink showed participants driving wheelchairs with the implant, covered in Neura Pod's July 2026 update.

Speech and creative work

The VOICE trial at UT Southwestern targets people with severe speech loss. Kenneth Shock, its second participant, appeared in a Neuralink video in March 2026, and Terence (Terry) Mandable, its third, spoke with a voice decoded from his brain in September 2026, as covered in the September 2026 update. Other participants use the implant for creative and professional work: Audrey Crews makes art, and CJ works on architectural designs in CAD software.

What comes next

Blindsight, Neuralink's planned vision implant, received an FDA Breakthrough Device Designation in September 2024. Neuralink's visual prosthesis page still invites people to join its registry to be told when US trials launch.

Neuralink's roadmap called for about 3,000 channels in 2026, about 10,000 in 2027, and 25,000 in 2028, and a 3,000-channel implant was disclosed in September 2026. In November 2025, Elon Musk shared a report that Noland Arbaugh hopes to receive a second implant below his spinal injury to help restore leg movement. Internal projections reported by Bloomberg in July 2025 targeted approval of the Telepathy device by 2029 and Blindsight by 2030.

Limits and open questions

Neuralink reported zero serious device-related adverse events as of January 2026, but the trials are small, and many of the first participant's threads retracted in 2024. The implant processes signals on its chip and sends them over Bluetooth to the participant's paired device, and Neuralink's privacy policy says trial data is governed by each trial's protocol and consent forms.

This article was first published in October 2025 and corrected in October 2026; the latest patient count is on the patient table.