Elon Musk’s brain technology startup Neuralink said Wednesday that an issue cropped up with the company’s first human brain implant weeks after it was inserted into a patient.

Neuralink Corp, led by Elon Musk, encountered a significant technical hiccup with its first human brain implant, according to a recent blog post by the company. The device, implanted in January in patient Noland Arbaugh,

Elon Musk's Neuralink finds a brain-computer interface device captured less data a month after implant surgery.

Neuralink said that the first human implant had a problem in the weeks following the historic surgery. Since then, the company made improvements to the algorithm.

Neuralink's human patient experienced a thread retraction in his brain-chip implant leaving it less effective, but tweaks later improved performance.

Elon Musk’s startup said ‘threads’ that connect the implant to Noland Arbaugh’s brain had ‘retracted’ in the weeks following the surgery

In a setback for Elon Musk’s brain technology company, Neuralink Corp., the device it implanted in its first human patient has had mechanical issues, the company wrote in a blog post.

Neuralink's first implant in a human brain experienced data loss likely due to an issue during surgery. Credit: Gabby Jones/Bloomberg via If one was to just listen to Elon Musk, they might think the first Neuralink implant in a human was a flawless achievement.