Science Corporation, the BCI company founded by former Neuralink president Max Hodak, is preparing to implant a pea-sized, 520-electrode sensor on the surface of the human brain during pre-planned surgery. The program will be led by Yale Neurosurgery Chair Murat Gunel; trials could begin in 2027. The company also has the PRIMA retinal implant, which restored vision in 38 patients, with CE mark approval due in mid-2026 (published by NEJM). Science Corp raised $230 million in a $1.5 billion Series C ($490 million total) and employs 150 people.
Science Corporation, the brain-computer interface company founded by former Neuralink president Max Hodak, is preparing to implant its first sensor inside the human skull. The device, a pea-sized chip filled with 520 recording electrodes, won’t be pushed into brain tissue like the Neuralink implant. Instead, a neurosurgeon will stand above the cortex, recording neural activity from the surface while operating for an unrelated condition. If all goes as planned, the first deployment could be in a patient needing brain surgery for a stroke.
The person who will perform that operation is Murat Gunel, head of the Department of Neurosurgery at the Yale School of Medicine and chief neurosurgeon at Yale New Haven Health. Science Corp named Gunel medical director of brain-computer interfaces in late March after two years of discussions with Hodak. His role is to develop clinical and surgical software for the company’s biohybrid BCI project, starting with the first human sensor placement.
Gunel’s approach is deliberately opportunistic. Instead of specifically recruiting patients for the brain-computer interface trial, the plan is to identify people who already need significant cranial surgery, such as stroke victims who need a craniectomy to relieve swelling. With the skull already open and the brain open, placing a small sensor on the cortical surface adds minimal additional risk and time. Gunel expects to evaluate the device’s safety and ability to record brain activity in these early cases.
The biohybrid gambit
What makes Science Corp’s technology unusual in a field full of electrode arrays is what comes after the sensor. The company’s long-term vision is a biohybrid neural interface: a device connected to lab-grown neurons genetically modified with light-sensitive proteins. Micro-LEDs on the chip cause those neurons to fire, and nearby recording electrodes detect the activity. The lab-grown neurons are designed to naturally integrate with the patient’s own brain cells over time, creating a biological bridge between electronics and neural tissue.
The first human deployment will not include biohybrid components. This is a recording-only device designed to prove that the sensor can safely sit on the surface of the brain and capture meaningful signals. But the architecture is built to accommodate the biological layer further, which sets Science Corp apart. All other companies in the BCI space. Where Neuralink, Paradromics and Synchron are fine-tuning how electrodes interact with neurons, Science Corp wants to grow new neurons that speak both biological and electronic languages.
Science Corp says it does not plan to seek FDA approval for these initial sensor deployments, arguing that the tiny device no longer poses any serious risks to patients undergoing major brain surgery. Instead, the company will work through institutional review boards and ethics committees that oversee human research at academic medical centers. Gunel is already in discussions with the relevant boards, although he describes it as “optimistic” that trials will begin in 2027.
From eyes to brains
The brain sensor represents Science Corp’s second front. The company’s more advanced program, PRIMA, is a retinal implant designed to restore vision in patients with geographic atrophy caused by age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness. The results, published in the October 2025 New England Journal of Medicine, showed that 38 patients at 17 clinics in five countries achieved an average improvement of 25.5 letters, more than five lines on the standard eye chart, after 12 months. 84 percent of patients could read letters, numbers and words. An accompanying NEJM editorial called PRIMA the “first vision-restoring treatment” in patients with advanced geographic atrophy.
The PRIMA implant is a 2mm by 2mm photovoltaic chip, about 30 micrometers thick, half the size of a human hair, that sits under the retina and is powered wirelessly through special glasses that project near-infrared light. It has FDA breakthrough device designation, and Science Corp has filed a CE mark application with the European Union, expecting approval by mid-2026.
The company closed a $230 million Series C in March 2026 led by Lightspeed with participation from Khosla Ventures, Y Combinator, Quiet Capital and IQT. the strategic investment arm of the intelligence community. The round valued Science Corp at $1.5 billion, bringing total funding to $490 million. 150 people work in the company.
A crowded field with a variety of bets
As the BCI sector accelerates, Science Corp enters human brain testing. Neuralink, which Hodak co-founded before leaving in 2021, implanted the N1 device in more than 20 patients and recently expanded trials in the UK, where a patient at University College London Hospital was monitored by a computer for hours after surgery. The company began planning high-volume production and automated surgical operations in 2026.
Paradromics, which received FDA investigational device exemption approval for its Connexus system in late 2025, claims a data transfer rate of more than 200 bits per second, more than 20 times Neuralink’s originally reported performance. Its purpose is to restore speech for people with severe paralysis. Synchron took an entirely less invasive route, placing the Stentrode device through blood vessels rather than requiring open brain surgery, implanted in more than 50 patients, and demonstrating an ALS patient controlling an iPad with a single thought.
Each company makes a fundamentally different technical bet. Neuralink optimizes for electrode density and surgical automation. Paradromics tracks raw bandwidth. Synchron trades signal quality for surgical simplicity. Science Corp is betting that biology itself, lab-grown neurons that merge with the brain, will eventually outperform them all.
This bet is unproven and years after confirmation. The biohybrid concept has been demonstrated in the laboratory, but never in the human brain. The first sensor deployment will not test biological integration; it will verify that the hardware platform can record usable signals from the cortical surface without difficulty. From there, the path to a full biohybrid interface, neurons and all, stretches regulatory area that no company has yet mapped.
Having spent decades on the brain, Gunel brings the clinical credibility that a technologist-founded startup needs. Hodak understands electrodes, optics, and genetically modified neurons. Gunel understands the body they are asking to receive them. Whether Science Corp’s biohybrid vision is a breakthrough or a detour will depend on how well these two forms. expertise is combined in the operating room.
