In the first half of 2026, China's brain-computer interface industry moved from top-level design to institutional implementation and industrial acceleration. Central SOEs and local state capital entered more substantively, while regulatory, insurance and local policies advanced, with investment already exceeding full-year 2025 levels.
CITIC Securities says the medical device sector has reached a turning point, with 2026 offering earnings and valuation repair opportunities. It highlights innovative devices, overseas expansion, brain-computer interfaces, AI healthcare, surgical robots, and exoskeleton robots as key themes, while listing policy, R&D, approval, macroeconomic, and geopolitical risks.
A spinal cord injury patient in Beijing used a domestic NEO brain-computer interface to control a robot in Shanghai 1000 km away, delivering a bottle of water. At a Shanghai academic conference, Tsinghua professor Hong Bo presented the demonstration and said the technology chain for the Avatar Project is fully connected.
On Sept. 15 in Haikou, CAS researcher Zuo Nianming outlined four barriers—inconvenient, unstable, unintelligent and not rigid demand—even as China's BCI enterprise count exceeds 200 and market forecasts rise. Industry speakers distinguished research from product logic, while regulators said standards remain at an early conceptual stage; Zuo proposed medical health, natural interaction and brain-computer agents as future directions.
Sichuan is accelerating exoskeleton robot adoption, with tourism and wellness as early scenarios and medical rehabilitation as the main track. Companies are advancing AI, brain-computer interfaces, and lightweight designs, while industry experts predict a consumer market boom within a few years.
At WRC 2026, BrainCo showcased its brain-controlled robot training platform, dexterous operation data collection matrix, and new-generation bionic hands, demonstrating advances in brain-computer interfaces and embodied AI. The company aims to enable more natural human-robot interaction by translating neural signals into robotic actions.
Wuhan startup Xiyuan Intelligent is developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) integrated with embodied AI to enable active rehabilitation for stroke patients. Founded in May 2026, the company has already demonstrated a medical delivery robot and is advancing from VLA to world models.