ABILITY Neurotech
Swiss neurotech company building Europe's first fully implantable wireless optical-link ECoG brain-computer interface for patients with severe paralysis from ALS, spinal cord injury, and stroke. Spun out of the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in January 2025.
Overview
ABILITY Neurotech is a Swiss clinical-stage brain-computer interface company building a fully implantable wireless ECoG (electrocorticography) BCI system designed for long-term home use in patients with severe paralysis. The company spun out of the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva in January 2025, building on more than eight years of prior R&D and approximately $50 million of investment at the Wyss Center under the early support of philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss. Rotem Kopel, PhD, serves as CEO.
Technology
ABILITY’s device is a sub-scalp fully implantable battery-free wireless BCI that records broadband neural activity from an ECoG electrode array on the surface of the brain. The signature engineering claim is a 50 Mb/s transcutaneous optical data link, an infrared communication channel that streams raw broadband neural data through the scalp at a fidelity not previously achieved in a fully implantable battery-free device. The architecture is designed to support chronic long-term home use rather than purely clinical-research settings, with comfort and safety profiles intended for routine living conditions.
Clinical programme
ABILITY received Investigational Medical Device Dossier (IMDD) approval from the Medical Research Ethics Committee (MREC) NedMec in the Netherlands on 26 May 2026 to begin the first chronic implantation study of its device in ALS patients. The study will be conducted at UMC Utrecht under the INTRECOM consortium, which brings together UMC Utrecht (clinical lead Mariska Vansteensel, PhD), the Technical University of Graz (Austria), ABILITY Neurotech, and German implantable electronics manufacturer CorTec. ABILITY also runs a parallel intraoperative evaluation programme at the Technical University of Munich (LMU and TUM). The company holds FDA Breakthrough Device Designation pending and is pursuing parallel EU MDR + FDA regulatory pathways.
Strategic position
ABILITY is the third Wyss Center / EPFL / Campus Biotech Geneva-adjacent BCI company to advance clinically in 2026, alongside Neurosoft Bioelectronics (Lacour lab spinout) and ONWARD Medical (Courtine / Bloch spinout, NASDAQ + Euronext listed). The company’s ECoG-with-optical-link architecture differentiates it from both penetrating intracortical BCIs (Neuralink, Paradromics, Precision Neuroscience) and from non-invasive surface-electrode peers, sitting in the high-bandwidth fully-implantable middle position.