--- title: "A paralyzed gamer beat his inventor at Mario: Tao Hailong and China's soft brain-computer interface" date: 2026-10-21 category: Builders site: NeuroAI canonical: https://neuroai.site/a/na-people-tao-hailong-neuroxess language: en --- # A paralyzed gamer beat his inventor at Mario: Tao Hailong and China's soft brain-computer interface > Tao Hailong (陶虎), founder of NeuroXess (脑虎科技), is betting on flexible cortical implants — not Neuralink's deep electrodes — to build China's first fully implanted, wireless brain-computer interface. In a Shanghai hospital room, a 28-year-old who had not moved his body below the shoulders for eight years picked up a game controller with his mind and beat the man who built the implant at Super Mario. The builder was Tao Hailong (陶虎). That moment, reported in late 2025, is the public face of a quieter contest in brain-computer interface (脑机接口): whether China can build an invasive neural implant that is both safe enough for long-term use and open enough to connect to the rest of the world. ## A different road from Neuralink Tao, born in Nanchang in 1982, trained as a mechanical engineer: a bachelor's at the University of Science and Technology of China, a master's at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a PhD in mechanical engineering at Boston University, followed by postdoctoral work in biomedical engineering at Tufts. He returned to China in 2014 to join the Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology (SIMIT) of the CAS, later serving as its deputy director until late 2024, when he stepped down from public office to work full-time at his company. In 2021 he founded NeuroXess (脑虎科技) in Shanghai, focused on invasive, flexible brain-computer interfaces. Where Neuralink inserts electrodes deep into brain tissue, NeuroXess places a soft, thin electrode on the brain's surface — a "flexible cortical implant" (柔性皮层植入) route that trades depth for coverage and, Tao argues, for long-term safety. ## The "three-all" (三全) device In October 2025, a 28-year-old patient with a high-level spinal cord injury received NeuroXess's "three-all" (三全) implant — fully implanted, fully wireless, and fully functional. It was China's first such device and, the company says, the world's second with a built-in battery, after Neuralink's 2023 implant. The design puts every core module, including the battery, inside the body — the battery seated under the chest skin, away from the brain. There are no cables through the skin, which removes a major infection pathway. Wireless power and data let the patient move untethered. Within a day the patient moved from intensive care to a general ward. By day five, after activation and training, he was controlling a cursor with thought alone, then a wheelchair, smart-home devices, and video games. In standardized tests the system reached 5.2 bits per second of decoding — close to leading international levels. ## What patients actually did The same platform has shown broader results. NeuroXess reports: - Real-time Chinese speech decoding at about 307 characters per minute — roughly twice normal speaking speed — letting a patient with damaged language areas output sentences. - A "two-brain interconnection" (双脑互联) demonstration of remote mental dialogue. - More than 50 clinical cases across multiple Chinese hospitals, mostly exploratory, ahead of formal registration trials. Tao's own framing, in a Xinhua interview, is that the human should set the goal and make the judgment while "AI and machines help turn the idea into a result." That is the deployment thesis behind NeuroXess: the interface is a connector, not a replacement. ## From lab to factory NeuroXess has moved toward manufacturing. In January 2026 it broke ground on a "super factory" in Jiangxi's Ganjiang New Area, intended to produce flexible electrodes, EEG devices, and surgical robots, with volume targets in the tens of thousands of units per year and production expected in the second half of 2026. The company won the SAIL Award at the 2021 World Artificial Intelligence Conference and was named to an MIT Technology Review "smartest companies" list in 2022. The remaining hurdle is regulatory: NeuroXess aims for a Class III medical-device certificate, the highest-risk category in China, within roughly two years. ## Why this matters globally For readers outside China, NeuroXess is a useful counterpoint to the Neuralink-centric story in Western coverage. Tao's cortical-surface route — placing a soft, thin electrode on the brain rather than threading deep electrodes — makes a different bet on the trade-off between coverage and long-term safety, and the "three-all" device shows a fully implanted, wireless design is not unique to one company. The 5.2 bits-per-second decoding and 307-characters-per-minute speech output sit close to leading international levels, which matters because it reframes China's BCI work as a parallel, competitive track rather than a follower. Consider the regulatory dimension: the remaining hurdle is a Class III certificate in China, the highest-risk category, within roughly two years — a timeline readers can benchmark against FDA pathways for similar implants elsewhere. The Jiangxi "super factory" targeting tens of thousands of units a year is the part most worth watching, because soft-implant viability ultimately depends on manufacturable, sterilizable, affordable electrodes more than on a single dramatic demo. ## Honest limitations Clinical details here come from Xinhua, Southern Weekend, and company statements; the 307-characters-per-minute and "two-brain" claims are company-reported and not independently audited. The "second worldwide" claim refers specifically to a built-in-battery, fully implanted design and should not be read as China trailing only Neuralink in all BCI forms — non-invasive and semi-invasive work elsewhere differs. The 50-plus case count is exploratory, not a completed pivotal trial, and long-term safety data is still thin. I have not interviewed Tao or the patients, and some biographical details come from Chinese-language profiles. ## What readers can do now - If you work in medtech or rehabilitation, watch NeuroXess's NMPA Class III progress and the Jiangxi factory's 2026 output — that is the real test of "soft implant" scalability. - If you follow BCI geopolitics, compare technical routes (cortical surface vs. deep electrode) rather than just counting implants; the safer, broader-coverage path has different trade-offs. - If you evaluate neurotechnology ethically, track consent and long-term-data transparency in these early trials — the field is moving from demonstration to deployment faster than the oversight playbook. --- Published by NeuroAI (https://neuroai.site/) — https://neuroai.site/a/na-people-tao-hailong-neuroxess Free to quote with attribution and a link to the original.