Max Hodak
Founder and chief executive of Science Corporation, which sells the PRIMA retinal implant in Europe, and a Neuralink co-founder who served as its president until 2021.
Background
Max Hodak co-founded Neuralink with Elon Musk in 2016 and served as its president until 2021. He graduated in biomedical engineering from Duke in 2012, having worked in Miguel Nicolelis’s laboratory on primate brain-computer interfaces, and founded Transcriptic, a robotic cloud laboratory that merged with 3Scan in 2019 to form Strateos. After leaving Neuralink he founded Science Corporation in Alameda, California, in 2021. He is also a named individual backer of Motif Neurotech, which is developing an implanted therapy for depression.
Science Corporation
In 2024 Science bought PRIMA, a photovoltaic chip placed under the retina, out of the liquidation of Paris-based Pixium Vision. The implant received its CE mark in July 2026 and went on sale in Europe for patients blinded by geographic atrophy, a late form of age-related macular degeneration. In the United States it holds Breakthrough Device and Humanitarian Use Device designations and is pending FDA approval. Science closed a $230 million Series C in March 2026, taking total funding to roughly $490 million, and has added two Butterfly Network alumni to its leadership: Nevada Sanchez as EVP Engineering in July 2026 and Darius Shahida, its strategy chief since January, as President in September.
Latest
In October 2026 the 18 patients still assessed at 36 months in Science’s pivotal trial read on average 29 more letters on an eye chart than before surgery, and a single patient gave an early result in Stargardt disease. At TechCrunch Disrupt on 13 October, Hodak said a larger next-generation implant will be in humans within the next year.
Why it matters
PRIMA puts a Neuralink co-founder in charge of an implant that is on sale while Neuralink itself remains in clinical trials. European uptake, reimbursement and the US decision will show whether vision restoration becomes a commercial entry point for implanted brain-computer interfaces.
Coverage on InsideBCI
- 15 October 2026: Science Corp reports first sign PRIMA works in an inherited eye disease
- 6 October 2026: Science Corp’s PRIMA implant patients averaged a 29-letter vision gain at three years
- 19 September 2026: Science Corporation names Darius Shahida President as PRIMA retinal implant enters commercial rollout
- 22 July 2026: AMD patients are reading letters again as PRIMA lands its CE mark in Europe
- 6 March 2026: Science Corp Raises $230 Million to Commercialise PRIMA Retinal Implant