Max Hodak's Science Corporation wins EU approval for a chip that restores vision to the blind

Science Corporation Wins EU Approval for Vision-Restoring Chip

Max Hodak left Neuralink in 2021 to build something less theatrical and more durable. Five years later, his company has a CE mark to sell it.

Science Corporation won approval from Europe's medical device regulator to commercialize PRIMA, a retinal implant that restores functional vision in patients with age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness that destroys light-sensitive cells at the back of the eye 1. The first commercial procedure could take place in Germany as early as September 1.

The device requires a one-hour outpatient surgery to place a chip behind the retina. Patients then wear camera-equipped glasses that capture the visual field and transmit it to the implant 1. The results go beyond light detection. One trial participant in France finished a 300-page novel after implantation and mailed the book to the company. Another drew a sketch of the Sydney Opera House. Trial patients have been recorded solving crosswords and Sudoku puzzles 1.

That is functional vision. And it is the revenue engine for everything else Science Corp wants to build.

Each PRIMA device is expected to cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the company is in discussions with European healthcare providers over reimbursement 1. Hodak says the brain-computer interface field needs "a company making $100 million a year of revenue" to avoid a funding winter, and that the vision business is what investors "know how to build spreadsheets around" 1. The cash flow from selling implants to AMD patients is designed to finance the harder work: bio-hybrid brain sensors that combine silicon with living neurons, which Science Corp is preparing for human trials with Dr. Murat Günel, chair of Yale Medical School's Department of Neurosurgery 12.

The contrast with Neuralink is structural. Both companies build brain implants. Both want to push the boundaries of human-machine communication. But Hodak chose a narrow, reimbursable medical application with a defined patient population, proved it in peer-reviewed trials, and is now taking it to market. The New England Journal of Medicine reported in October 2025 that PRIMA restored functional central vision in trial patients with geographic atrophy from AMD, and a January 2026 NEJM editorial described the implant as the first treatment to restore vision in that patient population 2.

On the US side, PRIMA received Humanitarian Use Device designations from the FDA for two rare forms of blindness, the first step toward an expedited regulatory review that could bring the device to American patients 12. Science Corp closed a $230 million Series C in March to fund commercialization and expanded clinical trials across six countries 2.

Science Corp did not build PRIMA from scratch. The company acquired the technology from Pixium Vision, the French firm that developed the implant, in 2024, then used its own engineering platform to prepare the product for regulatory approval and commercial scale 13.

A brain implant that generates revenue, qualifies for insurance reimbursement, and satisfies regulators is a different proposition than a brain implant that generates headlines. Hodak's wager is that the version of brain-computer interfaces where patients pay and insurers reimburse and clinical journals publish the results is what finances the version nobody has built yet. PRIMA in Germany this September is step one. The bio-hybrid sensor in a Yale operating room is what comes next.