Neuralink Returns to South San Francisco as Bay Area Neurotech Regroups

Neuralink has leased a 144,000-square-foot building at 499 Forbes Boulevard in South San Francisco, placing the company back inside the region’s biotech belt after a period of Texas-focused expansion. The move lands alongside a patient registry of roughly 10,000 people, an initial paper submitted to The New England Journal of Medicine, and ongoing first-in-human work. The signals point to a company accelerating rather than slowing.

Details on how the new site will be used have not been disclosed. The location sits amid elevated lab vacancies and within reach of UCSF’s Mission Bay, Stanford, and Berkeley, with regional neighbors including Science Corp in Alameda, NeuroPace in Mountain View, and Emotiv in San Francisco. Neuralink’s return underscores a broader movement of neurotech teams again investing in Bay Area infrastructure and talent, as the field moves from prototypes toward clinical approvals and commercialisation.

Neuralink's Move to the Bay

Public records and local reporting place the site at 499 Forbes Boulevard, a newly built, Class A life-science property that previously housed InterVenn Biosciences before the company exited in 2023. The building totals about 144,000 square feet with furnished lab space and office floors suited to mixed R&D and light manufacturing.

The lease comes as South San Francisco’s lab market cools. Vacancies are high and landlords are offering faster build-outs and better terms than in previous years. The Registry places availability across parts of the Peninsula in the low-30 percent range. For a company turning early prototypes into repeatable processes, the timing is favorable.

Neuralink has not disclosed how it will use the site. The move coincides with a patient registry of roughly 10,000 people, a first-in-human program, and an initial paper submitted to The New England Journal of Medicine. Together, these signals point to a company organizing for scale rather than a single research project.

The location sits inside a working neurotech neighborhood. Science Corp continues retinal interface development in Alameda. NeuroPace operates commercial neurostimulation programs out of Mountain View. Emotiv maintains its developer platform in San Francisco. Activity just outside the region adds context, with Paradromics reporting a first human implant and Synchron announcing a data partnership that brings modern AI tooling into its BCI stack.

San Francisco - the global hub of tech innovation (credit: Robert So)

Why the Bay Area Still Matters

The Bay Area still concentrates the mix neurotech needs. UCSF’s Mission Bay anchors clinical programs and IRB infrastructure. Stanford’s Wu Tsai Neurosciences Institute and Bio-X feed engineering talent and spinouts. Berkeley supplies signal processing, robotics, and open tooling. Proximity to NVIDIA and large AI groups keeps model building and data workflows close to device teams.

Regulatory and capital signals point in the same direction. FDA pathways for implanted systems have matured through Breakthrough Device and IDE programs used by Synchron and Onward. Neuralink’s paper submission to The New England Journal of Medicine suggests a push toward formal publication and more predictable review. Investors that back hard problems, including PsyMed, Khosla, Lux, and Mayfield, are prioritizing translational stacks that combine hardware, software, and clinical evidence.

The comparative edge is integration speed. Boston concentrates hospital networks. Europe leads on new materials and chronic interfaces through groups like INBRAIN and Cortec. The Bay Area’s advantage is the short loop between code, device, and clinic. Teams can prototype, test with nearby partners, refine models, and rebuild hardware without leaving the region.

The Bay’s neurotech footprint reads as a corridor. South San Francisco covers industrial space and manufacturing. Mission Bay anchors trials. Stanford feeds neural engineering and spinouts. The East Bay contributes algorithms and open hardware. It is not comparable to Boston's cluster yet, but ties between these nodes are tightening as companies commit capital and teams locally.

Mapping Neurotech Across Hubs

Globally, neurotech is spreading across hubs. The U.S. leads on implant programs and regulatory momentum, with devices moving through IDE and Breakthrough reviews. Boston concentrates hospital networks and trial throughput. Europe pushes materials and chronic interfaces, from graphene arrays to thin-film electrodes. Asia scales manufacturing, sensors, and components. The Bay Area’s role is the integration point where software, hardware, and clinic sit close enough to iterate quickly, with AI teams working alongside device builders.

Boston’s advantage is clinical throughput and established study infrastructure (credit: Slack12)

Neuralink’s lease does not create a cluster on its own. It does signal that teams building real products still want proximity to labs, trial sites, and talent. If Boston remains the clinic, the Bay looks like the workshop. The near term remains about proving reliability and patient safety, publishing clean data, and turning pilots into repeatable processes. That is where the Bay Area corridor will either take shape or fade back once again.

(Cover image by James Duncan Davidson)