Neuropixels originated at the HHMI Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia, from discussions between Tim Harris, a tool maker, and neuroscientists Albert Lee (I want to insert 100 probes with 1000 channels each) and Dima Rinberg, now at NYU, who said: “32 channels just isn’t enough”. Two projects were launched. First, a family of conventional silicon probes with up to 64 channels/shank was developed, licensed to and now sold by Cambridge Neurotech. For recording from these probes, the first multiplexing head stage recording system (named "Whisper") was designed and built by Brian Barbarits, then at Janelia, Second, Tim Harris,  with copious input from the Janelia community, wrote a specification and went searching the technology community for the capability to design and fabricate a programmable high channel count fully integrated probe. Imec in Leuven, Belgium, offered to make and manufacture these devices.  The first project yielded a probe now called Neuropixels 1.0. 

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Neuropixels was developed with funding from a consortium of private charities, HHMI Janelia Research Campus, Allen Institute for Brain Science, The Gatsby Charitable Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust. Together they supplied ~$5.5 million dollars for design and fabrication, plus millions more in support for probe testing and software development.