Science Corporation, the BCI company founded by former Neuralink president Max Hodak, is preparing to place a pea-sized, 520-electrode sensor on the surface of the human brain during an already scheduled surgery. Yale neurosurgery professor Murat Günel will direct the program; trials could begin in 2027. The company also has PRIMA, a retinal implant that restored vision in 38 patients (published by NEJM), whose CE mark approval is expected in mid-2026. Science Corp raised $230 million Series C at a valuation of $1.5 billion ($490 million total) and employs 150 people.
Science Corporation, the brain-computer interface company founded by former Neuralink president Max Hodak, is preparing to place its first sensor inside a human skull. The device, a pea-sized chip equipped with 520 recording electrodes, will not be inserted into brain tissue like Neuralink’s implant. Instead, it will rest on the cortex and record neural activity from the surface while a neurosurgeon is already operating for an unrelated condition. If all goes as planned, the first placement could occur in a patient who needs brain surgery for a stroke.
The man who will perform that surgery is Murat Günel, chair of the Department of Neurosurgery at Yale School of Medicine and chief neurosurgeon at Yale New Haven Health. Science Corp named Günel medical director of brain-computer interfaces in late March, following two years of talks with Hodak. His task is to develop the clinical and surgical program for the company’s biohybrid BCI project, beginning with the placement of the first human sensor.
Günel’s approach is deliberately opportunistic. Rather than recruiting patients specifically for a brain-computer interface trial, the plan is to identify people who already require major cranial surgery, such as stroke victims, for example, who need a craniectomy to relieve swelling. With the skull already open and the brain exposed, placing a small sensor on the cortical surface adds minimal risk and additional time. Günel hopes to evaluate the safety of the device and its ability to record brain activity in these first cases.
The biohybrid tactic
What makes Science Corp’s technology unusual in a field packed with electrode arrays is what comes after the sensor. The company’s long-term vision is a biohybrid neural interface: a device integrated with lab-grown neurons that are genetically modified with light-sensitive proteins. Micro-LEDs on the chip trigger those neurons to fire, and nearby recording electrodes detect the activity. The lab-grown neurons are designed to integrate naturally with the patient’s own brain cells over time, forming a biological bridge between electronics and neural tissue.
The first human placement will not include the biohybrid components. It is a recording-only device, intended to demonstrate that the sensor can be safely placed on the surface of the brain and capture meaningful signals. But the architecture is built to accommodate the later biological layer, which is what distinguishes Science Corp from all other companies in the BCI space. While Neuralink, Paradromics and Synchron are perfecting the way electrodes interact with neurons, Science Corp wants to develop new neurons that speak both biological and electronic languages natively.
Science Corp says it does not plan to seek FDA approval for the initial placement of these sensors, arguing that the small device does not pose any significant risk to patients already undergoing major brain surgery. Instead, the company will work through institutional review boards, the ethics committees that oversee human research at academic medical centers. Günel is already in talks with the relevant boards, although he describes the timeline for starting trials in 2027 as “optimistic.”
From the eyes to the brain
The brain sensor represents the second front for Science Corp. The company’s most advanced program is PRIMA, a retinal implant designed to restore vision in patients with geographic atrophy caused by age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness. Results published in the New England Journal of Medicine in October 2025 showed that 38 patients at 17 clinical centers in five countries had an average improvement of 25.5 letters, more than five lines on a standard eye chart, after 12 months. Eighty-four percent of patients could read letters, numbers and words. An accompanying NEJM editorial called PRIMA “the first treatment to restore vision” in patients with advanced geographic atrophy.
The PRIMA implant is a 2mm by 2mm photovoltaic chip, approximately 30 micrometers thick, half the width of a human hair, that sits beneath the retina and is powered wirelessly by specialized glasses that project near-infrared light. It has breakthrough device designation from the FDA and Science Corp has submitted a CE mark application to 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 the total funding to $490 million. The company employs 150 people.
A field full of different bets
Science Corp begins human brain testing as BCI sector accelerates. Neuralink, which Hodak co-founded before leaving in 2021, implanted its N1 device in more than 20 patients and recently expanded trials to the United Kingdom, where a patient at University College London Hospital controlled a computer within hours after surgery. The company has begun planning for high-volume production and automated surgical procedures in 2026.
Paradromics, which received investigational device exemption approval from the FDA for its Connexus system in late 2025, claims an information transfer speed of over 200 bits per second, more than 20 times faster than Neuralink’s initially reported performance. Its goal is the restoration of speech in people with severe paralysis. Synchron has taken an entirely less invasive route, deploying its Stentrode device through blood vessels rather than requiring open brain surgery, with more than 50 patients implanted and a demonstration of an ALS patient controlling an iPad with thought alone.
Each company is making a fundamentally different technical bet. Neuralink is optimizing electrode density and surgical automation. Paradromics seeks raw bandwidth. Synchron trades signal quality for surgical simplicity. Science Corp is betting that biology itself, the lab-grown neurons that fuse with the brain, will eventually surpass them all.
That bet is not proven and is years away from validation. The biohybrid concept has been demonstrated in laboratory settings, but never in a human brain. Placing the first sensor will not test biological integration; It will test whether the hardware platform can record usable signals from the cortical surface without complications. From there, the path to a fully biohybrid interface, neurons and all, extends through regulatory territory that no company has mapped yet.
Günel, who has been operating the brain for decades, brings the kind of clinical credibility that a startup founded by a technologist needs. Hodak understands electrodes, optics and genetically modified neurons. Günel understands the body they ask to accept them. Whether Science Corp’s biohybrid vision is a breakthrough or a detour will depend on how well those two forms of experience converges in the operating room.
