The first person to get a Neuralink chip in his brain says he met Elon Musk on the day of his surgery: ‘He’s a cool dude’

Arbaugh’s journey began with a diving accident at a summer camp in 2016, which left the former Texas A&M student paralyzed from the shoulders down and largely dependent on his family. For years, Arbaugh lived what he describes as a severely limited existence.

“I would stay up all hours of [the] night, just sleep in whenever, wake up whenever I wanted to because I didn’t really have anything planned, didn’t have anything going on in my life,” he told Fortune senior writer Jessica Mathews during their conversation. Arbaugh said he left his house only a couple of times per year.

“Before Neuralink, I thought I would never travel again,” he said. “[I] thought I would just stay in my room.”

Then came an unexpected phone call that would change his life. A friend asked if he would be interested in getting a chip implanted in his brain. Arbaugh said he remembered his response that day: “I said, ‘Got nothing better to do.’”

Becoming the first patient—and meeting Elon Musk

Neuralink, cofounded by Elon Musk in 2016, had spent years developing and testing its technology on animals before receiving FDA approval for human trials in May 2023. Arbaugh’s surgical procedure took place on January 28, 2024, at the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, about 2.5 hours from his home in Yuma. The two-hour surgery involved implanting a coin-sized chip beneath his skull, connected to over 1,000 electrodes that can read neural activity and translate it into digital commands.

Arbaugh said he was released from the hospital just 24 hours after surgery with a prescription for pain medication, but insisted he never even needed to take Tylenol: “It it didn’t hurt at all.”

“I like to joke and tell people that if I lost my memory and tomorrow you told me I had a chip in my brain, I wouldn’t believe you,” he said. “I can’t feel it. Don’t even know it’s there.”

During his conversation with Mathews, Arbaugh revealed a particularly memorable detail: He met Elon Musk on the day of his surgery, via FaceTime. Still somewhat under the influence of anesthesia, Arbaugh’s primary memory from that first encounter was complimenting Musk’s bomber jacket. “I was like, his bomber jacket was so cool,” he recalled.

Arbaugh met Musk again about six months later at Tesla’s Austin gigafactory, where they had what the 31-year-old implant patient described as a more substantive conversation. “He’s a cool dude,” Arbaugh said, noting their conversation wasn’t limited to Neuralink business: He and Musk “just had some fun” and discussed SpaceX and even a “bit of, like, alien talk.”