Elon Musk announced Monday that his brain-science startup company Neuralink has implanted a device in a human for the first time.
A person “received an implant” Sunday and was “recovering well,” the billionaire said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
The product the company has been working on would allow people to control their phones or computers with thoughts alone, Musk said.
The result of Sunday’s procedure, Musk said, showed “promising neuron spike detection.”
Musk’s announcement comes eight months after Neuralink announced that it had received approval from the Food and Drug Administration to conduct its first in-human clinical study.
Neuralink has been working on the implants for around five years. In 2022, it had to answer critics after a monkey died during an attempt to get the animal to play the video game Pong.
The company faced a federal investigation after employees told Reuters that the company was cutting corners, causing the deaths of research animals.
According to Musk, Neuralink’s first product would be called Telepathy. He has said the first users of the product would be people who have lost the use of their limbs.
“Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal,” he wrote on X.