Max Hodak on why Science is really a longevity company — and what happens when we stop dying
Key takeaways from Core Memory Podcast live interview with Science Corporation co-founder and CEO Max HodakDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (17 June 2026):
One company, one mission. Hodak — previously president and co-founder of Neuralink — pushed back on the idea that Science is a basket of duct-taped projects, framing it as a single effort to build a large, independent medical-technology company aimed at "fixing human beings" and restoring lost function.
Prima, the retinal prosthesis, is furthest along. Science's most advanced programme restores sight to the blind via an implant behind the rods and cones plus glasses. Hodak said one European patient who could not recognise faces for over a decade recently finished reading a 300-page novel — after decades and tens of billions of dollars of drug research delivered "very minimal progress".
The neural-engineering thesis. Hodak argued the brain is unusually amenable to being treated "as a computer": a cortical motor decoder can have a paralysed or ALS patient "playing video games an hour later", and deep-brain stimulation can restore a patient's ability to write cursive within seconds — versus drug discovery, which is "still really mining for oil".
Biohybrid and Vessel. Beyond Prima, Science is developing biohybrid — an earlier-stage, general-purpose brain-computer interface that grows neurons on a substrate that synapse into the brain — plus Vessel, a newer perfusion product line for keeping organs alive outside the body, and hardware/software sold to other BCI researchers.
"Science is really a longevity company." Hodak said his real competitors are outfits like Altos Labs and Calico rather than other BCI labs, positioning the work around extending and improving the human condition — the through-line behind the event's "what happens when we stop dying" framing.
~$500 million raised. Hodak disclosed Science has raised about half a billion dollars, much of it going into the retinal prosthesis, and conceded the device will launch well above his aspirational $5,000 price because hundreds of millions were spent developing it.
Regulation is the bottleneck. He argued clinical-trial direct costs are not the real problem — duration is, because you carry a big company while you wait. He praised Europe's "notified bodies" model, which can field thousands of reviewers for faster feedback, versus a small FDA, and floated delegating authority to local IRBs.
A globally competitive field. Hodak noted that the first-ever commercial marketing approval for an implantable BCI came from a company in China that did not spend hundreds of millions — a warning that rivals abroad can move faster and cheaper as the industry globalises.
Source: Core Memory Podcast with Ashlee Vance — 17 June 2026.
