Overview

Beinao-1 was developed by the Chinese Institute for Brain Research, Beijing (CIBR) with its spinout NeuCyber NeuroTech. A flexible 128-channel electrode array is placed through a small skull window onto the outer surface of the dura mater, above the cortex, and the implant is wireless and fully implanted. The epidural placement records aggregate surface signals and gives up single-neuron resolution in exchange for avoiding the tissue damage of penetrating electrodes, the same trade-off made by Neuracle NEO. NeuCyber’s Beinao-2, which uses penetrating electrodes, is in preclinical development.

Patients and results

The first three patients, implanted by April 2025, had paraplegia from spinal cord injury, hemiplegia after stroke and ALS-related speech loss. The ALS patient learned to produce output from a vocabulary of nearly 100 common Chinese words, and other participants controlled robotic arms and computer cursors. Seven people had been implanted before a livestreamed operation at Beijing Tiantan Hospital on 13 April 2026. CIBR plans 13 investigator-initiated implants during 2026, then a formal trial of around 50 patients once regulatory approval is in place.

At Xuanwu Hospital, a man with a five-year-old complete spinal cord injury received Beinao-1 together with a spinal cord stimulator in May 2025. After a year of staged rehabilitation his classification improved from ASIA Grade A to Grade C. The result covers one patient, and no peer-reviewed paper had appeared when it was disclosed in May 2026.

Why it matters

Beinao-1 shows a state-funded route to clinical scale. NeuCyber is owned by Zhongguancun Development Corporation, a state-owned enterprise, and the Beijing municipal government committed 200 million yuan to expand the trial. Hubei province has set a price of 6,552 yuan for an invasive BCI implant procedure, far below US costs. In March 2026 NeuCyber’s rotating chief executive, Li Yuan, put the company about three years behind Neuralink on clinical experience.

Coverage on InsideBCI

• 24 May 2026: Chinese paraplegic patient regains partial sensation and movement one year after world-first combined Beinao-1 BCI and brain-spine interface surgery
• 14 April 2026: China livestreams a brain implant: Beinao-1 goes live
• 24 March 2026: China’s Beinao-1 Reaches Five Patients With Semi-Invasive Brain Chip
• 21 March 2026: Beijing’s Top BCI Startup Admits It’s Three Years Behind Neuralink