Science Corporation · Grey Matter

Science Corporation is a neurotechnology company in Alameda, California, founded in 2021 by Max Hodak, a co-founder of Neuralink, and its first product to reach patients is PRIMA, a chip under the retina that restores some central vision in macular degeneration.

Science Corporation. Science Corporation is a neurotechnology company in Alameda, California, founded in 2021 by Max Hodak, a co-founder of Neuralink, and its first product to reach patients is PRIMA, a chip under the retina that restores some central vision in macular degeneration.

PRIMA came from Stanford. Science bought it in 2024 when Pixium Vision, which had tested the Stanford design, was liquidated, and it carried the pivotal trial to publication: in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2025, most of the 32 participants assessed at a year read several more lines on the chart with the implant. PRIMA received its CE mark and was launched in Europe in July 2026; how it turns light into current for the retina is told under retinal prosthesis.

Its research bet is biohybrid. It grows neurons from stem cells inside an electronic scaffold and grafts them onto the brain, so the electrodes stay outside the tissue and the host's own neurons wire themselves to the grafted ones; a 2024 preprint showed mice learning to report optical stimulation of such a graft, and a human sensor with 520 electrodes is being prepared.

It raised 230 million dollars in March 2026, led by Lightspeed and Khosla Ventures, at a valuation of 1.5 billion dollars.

It also sells fabrication. Science Foundry, launched in 2023 with a cleanroom in Durham, North Carolina, makes microdevices for other neurotechnology groups.

Science Corporation reached patients through the eye first.

A retina still wired to the brain was the shortest road to a marketed implant, while the harder bet, a living interface with the cortex, stays in the laboratory.

Questions: How does Science Corporation's biohybrid interface differ from Neuralink's threads? Neuralink inserts flexible threads carrying electrodes into the cortex, so every recording site sits in tissue it had to pierce. Science Corporation leaves its electronics on the surface and puts living neurons, grown from stem cells, in wells on the device; their axons grow into the brain and form synapses, so the host's neurons connect to cells the implant can read and drive. The promise is many more connections for less damage, and the open questions are whether the grafted cells survive, stay in place and escape rejection for years. In 2024 mice learned to report light pulses delivered to such a graft, and a human sensor with 520 electrodes, meant first for patients already having brain surgery, was being prepared in 2026. Why did a brain-computer interface company reach patients first with a retinal implant? The retina is part of the brain that a surgeon can reach through the eye, and in macular degeneration its output cells and the optic nerve still work after the photoreceptors die. A chip under the retina only has to replace the light sensors, and the brain's own visual wiring does the rest. Science Corporation also bought a device already deep in testing: PRIMA, designed at Stanford, came with Pixium Vision's trial when Pixium was liquidated in 2024, and its results in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2025 led to the CE mark in July 2026.