Neuralink Will Help People Walk Again in Coming Years, Musk Says

Elon Musk says Neuralink will enable people to walk and use their hands again “in the coming years,” setting out one of the brain implant company’s biggest goals in a Friday evening post on X.

“In the coming years, @Neuralink will enable people to walk and use their hands again,” Musk wrote. He shared the line while quoting a clip of Noland Arbaugh, the first person to receive a Neuralink implant, describing how the device gave him something to wake up for.

Musk did not give a timeline, a trial name, or any new clinical result. Restoring walking or natural hand movement is a stated ambition, not something Neuralink has shown its implant can do today.

Neuralink’s active trials are narrower. According to the company’s clinical trials page, one study is investigating hands-free control of a computer and a robotic arm for people with quadriplegia from ALS, brainstem stroke or spinal cord injury. A second studies turning thoughts into spoken voice for people with severe speech impairment.

Those results have still been striking for participants. In recent weeks, one patient used his implant to steer a Matic robot vacuum, and an ALS patient said Neuralink put him back on walks with his son by letting him drive his powered wheelchair. Neuralink also said one ALS participant reached 75 words a minute in his first week.

Moving a cursor or a wheelchair with thought is a long way from moving your own legs, though. Getting there would likely mean reading motor intent from the brain and then delivering signals back to the spinal cord or muscles, and Musk did not say how Neuralink plans to bridge that gap.

Still, it is a clear marker of where Musk wants the company to go next. Whether “coming years” means two or ten is the part patients will be watching most closely.