Science Corporation, the Alameda-headquartered neural engineering and brain-computer interface company founded by Max Hodak in 2021, announced on 17 September 2026 that its Chief Strategy Officer Darius Shahida has been appointed President in a dual role. The appointment lands two months into the European commercial rollout of PRIMA, the company’s photovoltaic subretinal implant for geographic atrophy in age-related macular degeneration, and six months after Science closed a $230 million Series C.
What Shahida’s mandate is
Shahida keeps his Chief Strategy Officer duties and adds the President title, reporting to CEO Max Hodak. His remit is scaling the commercial organization and operating infrastructure required to translate a decade of technical work into shipped product. Hodak framed the appointment: “In many ways, our company is entering a new commercial era. Darius can and will be a force multiplier around these efforts, as we begin to translate years of important scientific and technical work into products that can change health outcomes and powerfully impact the lives of our patients. Darius is already helping us build the commercial organization and operating infrastructure required for this next phase.”
Shahida joined Science full-time in January 2026 as Chief Strategy Officer, after first participating in the company’s Series B round as an investor. He spent the eight years before that helping lead Butterfly Network, the miniaturized handheld ultrasound company now listed on NYSE as BFLY.
The Butterfly Network pipeline into Science Corporation
Shahida is the second senior Butterfly Network alumnus Science has brought on in 2026. Nevada Sanchez, a Butterfly Network co-founder, joined Science on 29 July 2026 as EVP Engineering. Butterfly’s ultrasound-imaging technology and its senior operator network are becoming a source of talent and adjacent hardware capability across the invasive BCI operator field. Butterfly’s own Poseidon ultrasound-chip programme was licensed to Merge Labs on 1 September 2026 for a separate ultrasound-BCI venture co-founded by Sam Altman, Alex Blania and others; Merge Labs is unrelated to Science Corporation.
Where Science Corporation is in commercial deployment
Science received a CE mark from DEKRA for PRIMA in July 2026 under the EU Medical Device Regulation, covering 30 European countries; commercial launch also covers the UK. European commercial launch was announced 22 July 2026, with the first commercial implant expected in Germany. The FDA granted PRIMA both a Breakthrough Device designation and a Humanitarian Use Device designation, also in July 2026.
PRIMA is a 2-by-2 millimetre photovoltaic subretinal implant paired with near-infrared projecting glasses, designed to restore form vision to patients with geographic atrophy in age-related macular degeneration. The pivotal trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine enrolled 38 patients across 17 sites in 5 countries. Mean improvement was 25.5 ETDRS letters, and 80 percent of patients achieved at least logMAR 0.2 improvement. The technology was acquired from Pixium Vision in 2024; Science originally developed its own Science Eye platform in parallel.
Science closed a $230 million Series C on 5 March 2026, oversubscribed, with participation from existing investors Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Y Combinator, IQT and Quiet Capital, among others. Total capital raised since Science’s 2021 founding is roughly $490 million. No post-Series C valuation has been publicly disclosed.
Science’s technology portfolio includes PRIMA (commercial), plus Biohybrid neural interfaces, Vessel perfusion, Axon Probes, SciFi Headstage, Synapse Protocol, Nexus software, and NYX and LUX chips, alongside a Science Foundry MEMS-and-neural-engineering services business. The company operates from Alameda, California with offices in Paris, France and Research Triangle Park, North Carolina.
Where this lands in the retinal-BCI competitive field
Science frames PRIMA as “the first commercially available brain-computer interface for form vision restoration.” That claim survives adversarial pressure against the two prior visible commercial retinal-BCI efforts: Second Sight’s Argus II epiretinal implant (discontinued around 2020, abandoning existing patients; Second Sight later merged into Vivani Medical, with the Argus and Orion work now inside Cortigent) and Pixium’s original PRIMA programme (acquired by Science in 2024, meaning the current commercial device is a Science product on Pixium heritage). No other retinal-BCI or cortical-vision-restoration device holds a commercial approval in either the European Union or the United States as of publication.
The retinal-implant category sits inside a broader vision-restoration commercial pipeline that includes gene therapy (Luxturna for RPE65 retinal dystrophy, approved 2017), photovoltaic subretinal implants (PRIMA), cortical visual prostheses (Cortivis, Neuralink’s blindsight programme, others, all pre-commercial), and optogenetic retinal therapies (GenSight Biologics, others, pre-commercial). Second Sight’s Argus II epiretinal implant held a European CE mark from 2011 to its discontinuation around 2020; PRIMA is the first invasive vision-restoration device to reach EU commercial availability since then.
Hodak stays CEO
Max Hodak remains CEO of Science Corporation. Hodak co-founded Neuralink in 2016 and served as its President until May 2021, when he departed and founded Science later the same year. He is separately scheduled to deliver a keynote titled “Beyond Screens” at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 on Tuesday 13 October 2026 at Moscone West in San Francisco, on the Disrupt Stage. He is the only invasive-BCI voice on the Disrupt 2026 agenda.
What this signals for the commercial phase
Science’s leadership additions in the second half of 2026 have the shape of an operating build-out rather than a technical scale-up. Sanchez as EVP Engineering in July, Shahida as President in September, both drawn from Butterfly Network’s operator pool. That pattern reads as management preparation for a multi-country device rollout, not for further platform development. The company’s stated technology portfolio remains diversified across retinal, cortical, and vascular targets, but PRIMA is the only commercial-stage product driving the P&L today.
Not disclosed
Science Corporation’s headcount is not publicly disclosed. Post-Series C valuation is not publicly disclosed. PRIMA unit pricing in the European Union is not publicly disclosed. First-commercial-implant date in Germany is not publicly disclosed. Reimbursement pathway across European national health systems is not publicly disclosed. Shahida’s specific commercial performance metrics or compensation terms are not publicly disclosed.
What to watch
Whether Science announces its first commercial PRIMA implant in Germany within the coming quarters, and which clinic performs it. The first commercial procedure is a market-signalling event for the broader retinal-BCI category.
Whether the FDA converts PRIMA’s Breakthrough Device and Humanitarian Use Device designations into US commercial marketing authorization on any timeline visible from public FDA CDRH activity.
Whether Science hires further senior Butterfly Network alumni or hires from other medical-device operator alumni networks. The talent inflow pattern is worth tracking as a leading indicator of Science’s commercial ambitions.
Whether Merge Labs, the separate ultrasound-BCI venture co-founded by Sam Altman, Alex Blania and others that licensed the Butterfly Poseidon chip on 1 September 2026, discloses further platform architecture. Merge Labs is not part of Science Corporation.
Whether Science publishes any operating metrics (PRIMA implants performed, revenue guidance, gross margin, unit economics) in the coming quarters. Commercial-stage BCI companies are historically opaque; disclosure of any operating metric would be a category signal.
Sources
Primary:
- Business Wire press release, 17 September 2026
- Yahoo Finance mirror, 17 September 2026
- MassDevice coverage, 17 September 2026
- Medical Product Outsourcing coverage, 18 September 2026
- citybiz coverage, 17 September 2026
- Science Corporation announcement blog, Max Hodak
- Science Corporation Series C announcement, 5 March 2026
- Science Corporation PRIMA CE-mark announcement
- Science Corporation company page
Cross-reference to prior InsideBCI coverage: