Max Hodak

Co-founder and CEO of science-corp; co-founder and former President of neuralink. The central figure in the disease-first BCI strategy.

Background

• Neuralink co-founder (2016) alongside Elon Musk and seven others; served as President for four years; left in 2021.¹
• Duke University (biomedical engineering, Pratt School); research assistant in Miguel Nicolelis’s lab — a founder of invasive BCI research.
• Named to TIME100 Health; writes about the science of consciousness.
• Co-founded Science in 2021 with Alan Mardinly (ex-Neuralink biology director).

The strategic thesis (disease-first, not full-brain-interface)

Hodak’s logic as he tells it — in contrast to Neuralink’s ambition of a “full brain interface” for healthy people:

1. Cure a specific disease first — treat a specific group of patients first, then run through the business.
2. The retina is an extension of the brain — but structurally relatively simple, with controllable surgical risk (subretinal placement; patient’s inner retina intact).
3. The patient population is clear — AMD/geographic atrophy alone affects >5 million people worldwide; no existing treatment restores lost vision.
4. Fastest path to regulatory approval and revenue — a tight indication (GA due to AMD), a clear endpoint (ETDRS letters), and one CE pathway (30+ EU countries).

His own words on the acquisition: Pixium’s PRIMA was “the first really definitive demonstration of what researchers call ‘form vision’… the ability to recognize visual elements as parts of a larger object” — earlier devices only produced phosphenes, not reading; the math for the pivot: “take the disease that’s most certain to benefit, with the clearest unmet need, and the cleanest surgical window.”^{2 3}

Outcome (through Aug 2026)

The thesis was validated: PRIMA received CE mark + EU commercial launch (Jul 22, 2026) — the first BCI device ever CE-marked for functional form vision restoration; NEJM published the pivotal results (Oct 2025); Science raised **~$489M\ast \ast (SeriesC$230M, Mar 2026; valuation ~$1.5B report). Company now also builds biohybrid interfaces and the “Vessel” organ-perfusion initiative.

Related pages

• science-corp — his company and PRIMA
• pixium-vision — the acquired European tech
• neuralink — the “full brain interface” counterfactual
• brain-computer-interface, retinal-prosthesis — category context

References

• Science Corporation team page (science.xyz/company/team/max-hodak/).
• Science Corp. acquisition letter, April 25, 2024. ²
• Bizjournals/Crunchbase News: funding history; The New York Times/etc. secondary coverage of Hodak leaving Neuralink (2021).

Footnotes

1. science.xyz team page ↩

2. raw/articles/science-corp-pixium-acquisition-2024.md ↩ ↩²

3. raw/articles/science-corp-prima-nejm-2025.md ↩