Neuralink Data Transfer and Sales: Policies and Recipients
- Neuralink's privacy policy, last updated March 12, 2025, says the company does not sell personal information.
- For clinical trials, the policy says data is governed by the trial protocol, informed consent, and, where applicable, HIPAA authorization forms.
- Neuralink has not published a full list of who receives trial data; regulators such as the FDA can review trial records.
What Neuralink's privacy policy says
The N1 implant records neural activity from 1,024 electrodes, and that data lets participants control computers and robotic arms by thought. Neuralink reported 21 participants on January 28, 2026.
Neuralink's Privacy Policy, last updated March 12, 2025, confirms no sale or unauthorized commercialization occurs. For people in clinical trials, it says data handling is governed by the applicable trial protocol, informed consent, and, where applicable, HIPAA authorization forms. Those documents are not public, so the policy does not spell out trial participants' rights over their neural recordings.
How data moves
The implant processes signals on its chip and sends them over Bluetooth to the participant's paired device, where decoders turn them into actions like gaming or eating with a robotic arm. Neuralink also uses participants' data to improve its software: its 2026 decoders were pretrained on over 50,000 hours of neural data, according to Neuralink.
Trials in Canada and the UK also follow local privacy law, and a UAE site is recruiting. Neuralink has not published how long it keeps recordings, where they are stored, or how deletion works for trial participants.
Who receives data
In any FDA-regulated trial, the trial sites, their ethics boards, and regulators can review study records. The FDA has reviewed Neuralink's data for its Breakthrough Device Designations for Blindsight and speech restoration. Neuralink's own researchers use participants' data to refine decoders, which made possible results like the robotic arm control shown by Alex Conley, who has a spinal cord injury.
Patient Registry information is used to check eligibility for trials.
The no-sale commitment
Concerns about neural data often focus on consumer headsets that share brain-wave data with third parties. Neuralink's medical trials operate under consent forms and regulatory oversight, and its policy rules out selling personal information. Patients like Noland Arbaugh have used the implant daily since early 2024.
Colorado, California, Montana, and Connecticut have passed laws protecting neural data, and the MIND Act introduced in the U.S. Senate in September 2025 would direct the FTC to study the issue.
What to watch
As Neuralink adds channels and products, the amount of data per participant will grow. Neuralink raised $650 million in June 2025, and clearer public rules on retention, deletion, and sharing of trial data would answer many of the open questions in this article.
This article was first published in October 2025 and corrected in October 2026; the latest patient count is on the patient table.
