Elon Musk's brain chip company Neuralink hosted its 2025 summer update event in June, briefing the public on developments with two company products: Telepathy and Blindsight. Today, we look at the most important updates on Telepathy.

Neuralink, co-founded by Elon Musk, presented its latest developments on the Telepathy brain-computer interface during its summer update event. The company is currently conducting trials in the US with seven participants who have motor-related or neurological conditions, allowing them to control computers and play games using only their thoughts. 

While Telepathy aims to eventually enable direct mind-to-mind communication, significant technical and ethical challenges remain. These include the complexity of mapping brain signals, ensuring neurocompatibility between individuals, and addressing the risks associated with invasive brain implants. Neuralink is working to minimize surgical risks and is also considering privacy and security concerns related to the technology.

All you need to know about Neuralink's Telepathy update

What if we lived in a world in which our brains could control robotic prosthetics, play video games, and do work without us having to use our hands? How about a world in which we finally get an answer to a question probably as old as humanity? What is consciousness? These were some of the topics discussed during Neuralink's summer 2025 update in June. And according to co-founder Elon Musk, it's also what the brain chip company is aiming to achieve. Here are the most important moments from the conference. Neuralink has been running US trials for two products that its co-founders talked about, called telepathy and blindsight. Today, we'll be looking at telepathy. Musk described the product as a consensual telepathy tool that aims to transform the way humans communicate, eventually allowing people to trade information thousands of times faster than it's ever been possible. How would it work? Imagine talking to a friend, but without speaking or writing. No calls, no texting. Instead, a BCI, or a brain-computer interface, would send your thoughts directly from your brain to someone else's, and vice versa. Neuralink's telepathy is still in development. The company is currently running trials in the US, with seven participants testing the practical applications of the BCI technology. In clips shown in the conference, we see participants, all of whom are suffering from motor-related and neurological conditions, such as ALS or paralysis, successfully controlling their computers through thoughts alone. Here, the participants play Mario Kart together without ever touching a console. And while telepathy aims to eventually achieve mind-to-mind communication, the BCI technology is already working, helping these trial participants regain their ability to speak or perform tasks. But moving from BCI to mind-to-mind communication is a challenge. Our brains generate electrical signals specific to thoughts, sensory experiences, and intentions. But these signals are not set in stone. They're highly variable, and their patterns often overlap, making it difficult to map exactly what signal corresponds to an idea or intention. Think of Michel Gondry's Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, for example. In this 2004 film, scientists could track the exact parts of the brain certain memories occupied and target those areas to erase them. But the reality of our brains is not as neat as fiction. Additionally, for telepathy to work, Neuralink will have to figure out how to transmit information from one brain to another. Though the company has figured out how to make brain-to-device communication work, brain-to-brain information transmission is way more difficult. As no two brains are alike, the receiver's brain will have to successfully interpret the information sent by the transmitter and translate it in a way that the receiver understands correctly. This is also known as neurocompatibility. These are some of the technical challenges telepathy is facing, but there are also safety-related and ethical concerns. Inserting an implant into a person's brain, after all, is an invasive procedure, which comes with the risk of infections, long-term side effects, and even brain damage. Neuralink says it has been optimizing its advanced surgical robots to minimize those risks, but there's still need for further research and improvement. Then there's also the question of privacy and security. If you're using telepathy, who will have access to your thoughts? Governments notoriously failed to adopt protective policies in earlier examples of tech innovations, such as social media. And they're currently struggling to adopt safeguarding policies concerning the use of AI. So, can we trust them with telepathy? What do you make of this update? And would you like more explainers on Neuralink's work? Let us know in the comments. And if you want more stories about the technologies shaping our future, follow us or subscribe to our channel.

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