Neuralink ‘Patient 4’ Mystery, TikTok Sleuths and Paradromics’ FDA‑Approved Speech Chip: What’s Really Happening on 25 November 2025

As of 25 November 2025, fresh questions about Neuralink’s “missing” Patient 4 collide with major regulatory moves by rival brain‑implant company Paradromics. Here’s what we actually know — and what we still don’t.

As TikTok sleuths investigate Neuralink’s mysterious “Patient 4” Mike Melgarejo and a GoFundMe warning he’s “ready to give life up,” rival Paradromics wins FDA approval to trial a speech‑restoring brain implant. Here’s a clear, fact‑checked look at today’s brain‑computer interface news.

1. The story so far: brain chips under the spotlight

Today, 25 November 2025, brain‑computer interfaces (BCIs) are back in the headlines for two very different reasons:

A growing online mystery around Neuralink’s “Patient 4,” believed to be Mike Melgarejo, a man living with aggressive ALS who joined Elon Musk’s experimental Telepathy brain‑chip trial. ^[1]
A wave of fresh coverage about Paradromics, a Neuralink rival whose Connexus implant has just been cleared by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for a first human trial aimed at restoring speech. ^[2]

New pieces published or updated today — including a startup‑news recap of the TikTok investigation into Patient 4 and local reporting from Austin on Paradromics’ trial plans — are tying these threads together into a wider debate about safety, transparency and the future of neurotech. ^[3]

2. Who is Neuralink’s “Patient 4,” Mike Melgarejo?

Although Neuralink itself has never formally published a full patient list, multiple open sources now connect “Patient 4” to Michael “Mike” Melgarejo, a man with a particularly aggressive form of ALS. ^[4]

Key details we can verify from public records:

A GoFundMe titled “Those things we do, so others may live…” was set up in June 2025 by friend Ryan Biggs, explicitly stating that Mike has aggressive ALS and was “one of the first people to get approved for Neuralink.” ^[5]
The fundraiser says Mike is “not in a good place — mentally, financially, physically, or emotionally”, and that he feels like a financial burden on his family. ^[6]
The organizer writes that Mike is “ready to give life up,” underscoring the severity of his distress and aiming to reduce the family’s immediate financial pressure. ^[7]

On its own, the GoFundMe paints a picture that’s heartbreakingly familiar in ALS: catastrophic health decline, mounting costs, and deep emotional strain. It does not itself prove that his difficulties are caused by the implant — only that he’s both very ill and under intense pressure.

Meanwhile, background reporting on Neuralink’s Telepathy trial shows that its early feasibility study targets people with paralysis from spinal cord injury or ALS, following FDA approval for human testing in 2023. ^[8]

3. TikTok sleuth “Drey” and the viral question: where is Patient 4?

Online interest exploded in mid‑November after Drey, a TikTok creator and writer behind The Drey Dossier Substack, published a deep‑dive into Neuralink’s trial participants. ^[9]

Her core claims, as summarised in coverage from We Got This Covered and a new StartupNews piece today: ^[10]

Most Neuralink participants appear to have branded social accounts
Handles like @PairedWith_P7 and @telepath_8 post upbeat content about life with the implant and often praise Musk and the company. ^[11]
Patient 4 – identified as Mike – is the exception
Drey reports that, unlike other patients, Mike has no active public social profile, and basic web searches return almost nothing about him beyond the GoFundMe and a blurred appearance in a Neuralink funding update video. ^[12]
The GoFundMe raises new questions
- It was created about four months after his reported implantation date in early 2025. ^[13]
- The organiser, according to Drey, appears linked to a major insurance brokerage that handles corporate liability for medical‑device firms — sparking speculation about whether this could be an informal support channel for a struggling trial participant. ^[14]
- One donation of $3,000 is attributed to Shivon Zilis, Neuralink’s director of operations and mother to several of Elon Musk’s children, which critics argue should have been handled through formal trial support rather than personal contributions. ^[15]
Digital disappearance
Today’s StartupNews recap, published 25 November 2025, reiterates that Mike’s “digital footprint appears to have been wiped,” while other Neuralink trial participants remain very public — fueling concern that something may have gone seriously wrong. ^[16]

None of this proves a cover‑up, but it does highlight a transparency problem: with such a high‑risk, high‑profile trial, long silences and missing data are almost guaranteed to invite suspicion.

4. Daily Mail interview: his wife says the truth is “more heartbreaking”

Over the past 24 hours, the narrative escalated again when MailOnline (Daily Mail) published a feature under headlines such as:

“Neuralink’s ‘Patient 4’ feared missing months after getting revolutionary brain chip… now his wife tells the REAL heartbreaking story.” ^[17]

A short English‑language teaser republished on ABDPost summarises the angle like this: ^[18]

Rumours swirled that Patient 4 had “vanished under mysterious circumstances” after his social media went dark.
A GoFundMe claimed he was “not in a good place,” triggering fears that Neuralink had abandoned or silenced a struggling participant. ^[19]
In an exclusive interview, his wife Dalila “reveals the truth,” framed as more tragic — and more human — than the online conspiracy theories.

Because the full article sits behind MailOnline’s paywall and is not fully mirrored elsewhere, we do not yet have complete, verifiable detail of Dalila’s account. What the headlines and teasers strongly imply is that: ^[20]

Mike has not simply disappeared; he and his family are apparently dealing with the brutal reality of advanced ALS plus the pressures of being part of a world‑famous experiment.
The “heartbreaking story” is likely about his deteriorating health and mental state, rather than a thriller‑style vanishing.

That inference is based on how the story is promoted across news aggregators, not on direct access to the entire interview, so it should be treated cautiously. ^[21]

What we still don’t know

Crucially, there is no public evidence today that:

Neuralink has confirmed any serious device‑related complication in Patient 4’s case;
Regulators such as the FDA have taken enforcement action related to his situation; or
The GoFundMe or donations reflect an official acknowledgment that the implant caused his decline.

Those may or may not turn out to be true, but as of 25 November 2025 they remain unproven claims raised by independent investigators and commentators, not established facts.

5. Neuralink, clinical trials and what the FDA actually requires

Some of the online commentary suggests Neuralink might be able to quietly ignore or “bury” a struggling patient. In reality, the company operates under a formal Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) for its Telepathy implant. Under that framework: ^[22]

Sponsors must report unanticipated adverse device effects to the FDA and all relevant ethics boards within 10 working days of learning about them.
Trials must include ongoing monitoring, detailed record‑keeping and follow‑up for device recipients.
There is now specific FDA guidance on implanted BCI devices for paralysis or amputation, covering study design, safety monitoring and long‑term follow‑up.

In other words, if Patient 4 experienced device‑related complications or serious mental‑health events linked to the implant, Neuralink would be legally obliged to document and report those. Whether those reports will ever become public is another matter; many IDE safety reports remain inside regulatory files and academic papers.

Parallel to this, the Implantable Brain‑Computer Interface Collaborative Community (iBCI‑CC) — a joint effort between FDA, researchers, industry and patient advocates launched in 2024 — is trying to standardise expectations around exactly these issues: safety monitoring, data transparency, and long‑term support for participants in neural implant trials. ^[23]

6. Meanwhile, Neuralink’s competition steps up: Paradromics’ Connexus trial

While Neuralink faces intense scrutiny over Patient 4, its rivals are quietly hitting key regulatory milestones — especially Paradromics, an Austin‑based neurotech firm.

On 20 November 2025, multiple outlets reported that the FDA had approved Paradromics’ Connexus brain‑computer interface for an early‑stage human trial focused on speech restoration in people who can no longer speak due to paralysis or neurological injury. ^[24]

Fresh coverage today adds more detail:

The Austin American‑Statesman reports that Paradromics has received the green light to begin its first long‑term clinical trial, implanting Connexus in two volunteers who have lost speech. If early results are positive, the study will expand. ^[25]
Connexus is described as a small metal disk with 421 microwire electrodes that penetrate the cerebral cortex to record directly from neurons, offering a high‑bandwidth link between brain and computer. ^[26]
The device is wired to a power and communications module implanted in the chest, and early animal tests suggest data rates far higher than many existing BCIs. ^[27]

Paradromics’ own materials and independent coverage suggest the first phase of the trial will: ^[28]

Focus mainly on safety and long‑term stability of the implant;
Test whether users can generate text or synthesised speech by thinking about speaking, with ambitious long‑term goals of reaching conversational speeds;
Start with two single‑implant participants, then expand to as many as 10 people, including some with dual implants to increase bandwidth.

The upshot: while Neuralink has grabbed the limelight with flashy demos of mind‑controlled gaming and drawing, Paradromics is positioning Connexus as a medical‑grade, speech‑first BCI, designed from the ground up to scale to healthcare settings.

7. Neuralink vs Paradromics: same dream, very different approaches

Across the week’s coverage, a few important contrasts keep coming up: ^[29]

Implant design
- Neuralink Telepathy: a quarter‑sized wireless chip sunk into the skull, with thin flexible threads inserted into motor cortex.
- Paradromics Connexus: a smaller metal disk with hundreds of penetrating microwires, designed for high‑bandwidth, long‑term recording and wired to a chest module.
Initial use‑cases
- Neuralink’s public demos emphasise cursor control, gaming and digital autonomy for people with paralysis. ^[30]
- Paradromics is laser‑focused on restoring speech, allowing users to generate text or synthetic voice directly from neural activity in speech‑related brain areas. ^[31]
Public communication
- Neuralink has leaned on high‑profile social‑media moments and carefully curated patient accounts.
- Paradromics has taken a more traditional regulatory‑and‑press‑release route, with detailed technical blogs (including one explicitly titled “Neuralink device limitation”) positioning Connexus as a more robust alternative. ^[32]

With the FDA now openly supporting an ecosystem of implantable BCI developers — through guidance documents and the iBCI‑CC collaborative community — it’s clear this is no longer a one‑company race. ^[33]

8. The ethics backdrop: neuroprivacy and autonomy

The debate over Patient 4 is unfolding just days after Scientific American and Nature highlighted deeper concerns about AI‑driven brain decoding. In a piece titled “Do Brain‑Decoding Devices Threaten People’s Privacy?” ethicists warn that: ^[34]

AI‑enhanced BCIs could, in time, infer moods, preferences or even sensitive thoughts from neural signals.
Existing privacy laws weren’t designed with “neural data” in mind, leaving gaps in how brain‑derived information is stored, shared or commercialised.
For people with disabilities, BCIs promise life‑changing benefits — but also create new forms of vulnerability if their data is mishandled or if they feel pressured into risky trials.

U.S. lawmakers have already started probing how neurotech companies handle brain data, especially in the consumer BCI market where devices fall outside strict medical‑device regulations. ^[35]

Against that backdrop, the questions being asked about Neuralink’s Patient 4 aren’t only about surgical risk. They’re also about:

Duty of care when a participant becomes severely depressed or financially desperate.
What counts as informed consent in trials where the long‑term impact on mental health, identity and autonomy is still largely unknown.
Who owns and controls neural data generated during these experiments — the patient, the company, or both?

9. What today’s news actually tells us — and what to watch next

Putting all of today’s threads together, here’s the clearest view we can give as of 25 November 2025:

Mike Melgarejo (“Patient 4”) is very likely an early Neuralink trial participant with aggressive ALS, currently facing profound physical, emotional and financial strain. That much is firmly documented by his GoFundMe and independent reporting. ^[36]
TikTok investigator Drey has revealed real and verifiable red flags — especially the combination of: a missing public profile, a crisis GoFundMe, a high‑level Neuralink executive donation, and an organizer tied to corporate insurance. These facts are accurate; her interpretation of them as evidence of systemic failure or a cover‑up remains speculative. ^[37]
The Daily Mail interview with his wife, Dalila, appears to push back on sensational “he vanished” narratives, replacing them with a more personal, “heartbreaking” account of life after the implant and the progression of his disease. The precise details, however, are not fully accessible to the public yet. ^[38]
Regulators already have formal mechanisms to track serious problems in BCI trials, and Neuralink is required to report unanticipated adverse device events. Whether those reports will ever see daylight — via academic publications, leaks or regulatory action — is an open question. ^[39]
Paradromics is now a fully credentialed rival, with FDA‑cleared human trials for a speech‑restoring brain implant that may ultimately compete with, or outperform, Neuralink’s Telepathy system in certain medical use‑cases. Today’s Austin and tech‑press coverage underlines how quickly the broader BCI field is maturing. ^[40]
Ethicists and regulators are increasingly focused on neuroprivacy and autonomy, not just surgical risk — a theme that will loom ever larger as companies like Neuralink, Paradromics and Synchron move towards larger trials and eventual commercial products. ^[41]

For readers and potential trial volunteers

If you’re following these stories because you or someone you love might one day consider a brain‑computer interface, a few practical takeaways:

BCIs are still experimental: no matter how slick the demo videos, these are early‑stage clinical devices with real uncertainty around long‑term safety and reliability.
Ask about follow‑up and support: any responsible trial team should be able to explain what happens if your health or mental state worsens — and who pays for care when the trial ends.
Pay attention to transparency: companies that publish trial protocols, adverse‑event data and peer‑reviewed results are easier to hold accountable than those relying mainly on social media or PR.

And if you ever feel like Mike — hopeless, overwhelmed, or “ready to give life up,” as his friend described — please treat that as a medical and mental‑health emergency, not just a tech story. Confidential crisis lines and local health services exist precisely for moments like that.

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