Kenneth Shock

Kenneth Shock is an ALS patient and Neuralink VOICE clinical-trial participant publicly featured in 2026 for using Neuralink’s brain-computer interface to translate intended or imagined speech into audible speech in his own voice.

Neuralink Says 20-Patient Scale Is Advancing Brain-AI Interfaces

Neuralink co-founder and president DJ Seo told Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire at AI Ascent 2026 that the company has moved from a single human implant demonstration to more than 20 patients, while still treating its current work as restoration of lost function rather than elective enhancement. Seo argued that Neuralink’s larger aim is not faster computer control but a higher-bandwidth interface between brains and AI, eventually enabling direct, multimodal transfer of concepts. The path there, he said, depends less on a single implant breakthrough than on scaling surgery, robotics, manufacturing, clinical evidence and neural-data models.

Sequoia CapitalMay 28, 202612 min read