Blackrock Neurotech · Grey Matter

Blackrock Neurotech is a company in Salt Lake City, founded in 2008 on technology from the University of Utah, that makes the Utah array and the recording systems around it, the hardware on which most human intracortical brain-computer interface research of the last two decades has run.

Blackrock Neurotech. Blackrock Neurotech is a company in Salt Lake City, founded in 2008 on technology from the University of Utah, that makes the Utah array and the recording systems around it, the hardware on which most human intracortical brain-computer interface research of the last two decades has run.

Unlike the newer companies, it began as a supplier to academic labs and clinical research groups. Its arrays were implanted in the BrainGate trials and in many of the landmark studies of cursor control, robotic arms, touch feedback and speech decoding, and its systems are used in more than a thousand labs.

Its device is the Utah array, cleared for short-term recording in people and used long-term under clinical trials.

Its ownership changed in 2024, when the stablecoin company Tether invested 200 million dollars and became its majority shareholder.

It holds the longest human record in the field, with arrays implanted in some people for more than eight years, and it is pursuing approval for permanent clinical use.

Questions: Why has one small array from Utah carried most human brain-computer interface research? For most of two decades it was the only high-channel microelectrode array with regulatory clearance for recording single neurons in people (its clinical version is cleared for short-term use), and Blackrock Neurotech has supplied it to research groups since the BrainGate trials began in 2004. Its 4 by 4 mm grid of 96 to 128 needles reads the spikes that fine decoding needs, and its arrays have been studied in dozens of people for more than 30,000 implant days in total. Most landmark results, from cursor and robotic arm control to the speech decoders of 2023, were obtained with it, which is why newer devices are compared against it.