Restoring Sight and Growing Neurons on Silicon | Max Hodak

Max Hodak is the founder and CEO of Science Corp (previously co-founded Neuralink and Transcriptic). Science is building PRIMA, a retinal prosthetic that’s restoring meaningful vision for patients with blindness caused by age-related macular degeneration. The team is also developing a biohybrid brain implant that grows living neurons directly onto a silicon chip, then interfaces that system with the cortex. In this conversation, we go deep on how both technologies work, how PRIMA restores vision, how the biohybrid BCI connects to the brain, what the next milestones are for neural interfaces, and what it would imply to add a new functional brain area to a human. We also dig deep into how Max built and leads Science: his founder story, how the team drives Fast R&D, and how the team is able to speed through high-uncertainty, high-impact projects. Hope you enjoy! Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 00:52 What counts as neurotech? 01:45 History of brain-computer interfaces and the iPhone dividend 07:25 PRIMA - How Science is restoring vision in blind patients 10:10 Why stimulating bipolar cells works when the optic nerve doesn't 30:30 Are we bottlenecked by biology or engineering? 32:40 Expanding the brain's bandwidth beyond 10 bits per second 37:00 Can we add new areas to the brain? 37:46 Biohybrid BCIs: neurons growing on a chip 39:20 What could neural augmentation look like? 01:13:20 How Science drives Fast R&D 01:44:00 How founders learn and level up Episode Links: Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/50ho... Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Substack: https://www.juanbenetpodcast.com/p/ma... Links From the Podcast Science Corp: https://science.xyz Woman hearing for the first time:    • 29 years old and hearing myself for the 1s...   PRIMA Visual Prosthesis: https://science.xyz/technologies/prima/ PRIMA patient filling out crossword puzzle:    • PRIMAvera Clinical Study: Patient Clips   PRIMA a global mission to restore vision:    • A global mission to restore vision | PRIMA...   Biohybrid BCI: https://science.xyz/technologies/bioh... Patrick Collison FAST post: https://patrickcollison.com/fast iPhone launch keynote in 2007:    • Steve Jobs Introducing The iPhone At MacWo...   Pantheon on Netflix: https://www.netflix.com/title/81937398 Links Juan Benet on X: https://x.com/juanbenet PL Neuro: https://plneuro.xyz Protocol Labs: https://pl.xyz Disclaimer: https://bit.ly/PodcastDisclaimer