ABILITY Neurotech

Geneva spin-out of the Wyss Center developing a battery-free implant with 128-channel surface arrays and an optical data link, aimed first at restoring communication.

Interface category

Electrocorticography

Signal

Local field potentials, including high-gamma activity

Invasiveness

Invasive

Recording / stimulation

Recording

Device

ABILITY system — Battery-free implant with surface electrode arrays and an infrared optical data link through the skin

Channels

128-channel arrays

Regulatory status

Investigational; intraoperative use reported, chronic study planned

Main use cases

Communicate, Control

Works with

Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering · UMC Utrecht · Graz University of Technology

Shown in people

Brief recordings during surgery in Germany. The 50 megabit per second optical link and the 128-channel arrays are design figures.

Still an aim

A one-year home-use study in people with ALS at UMC Utrecht, planned for late 2026.

What stands in the way

Chronic performance: how an optical link through skin behaves over months of daily use.

On record here: 0 peer-reviewed papers

ABILITY is the most concrete European answer to the question of how to get high-bandwidth data out of a sealed implant: light, not radio, at a reported 50 megabits per second, with no battery inside the head. Its first chronic study is planned at the centre that ran the longest home-use ECoG implant on record. Until that study reports, the performance of the link in daily life is a design claim.

1. 20 Aug 2026

   Intraoperative study under way in Germany. A one-year home-use study in people with ALS is planned for late 2026 at UMC Utrecht, with TU Graz and CorTec as partners; the company says a Dutch ethics committee has approved the device dossier.

   Independent reportingIEEE Spectrum

2. 2025

   Spun out of the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering in Geneva.

   Independent reportingIEEE Spectrum

• Rotem Kopel

  CEO

As publicly stated by the organisation. Not a complete list.

• ECoGFirst-in-human

  CorTec

  A fully implanted closed-loop system that both records from and stimulates the cortical surface.

• ECoGApproved / cleared

  Precision Neuroscience

  A thin-film cortical surface array that slides under the skull through a narrow slit.

• EndovascularFeasibility

  Synchron

  A BCI delivered through the blood vessels, without open brain surgery.

• ECoGFirst-in-human

  Neurosoft Bioelectronics

  Soft, stretchable electrode arrays for the brain surface, tested during surgery in people.

• Clinical · 20 Aug 2026

  A European implant sends brain data out by light