The Frontier

Max Hodak asserts the brain is literally a physical computer. Computational problems are solved by arranging matter in specific ways and allowing natural physical laws to execute state transitions.

Science received European marketing approval for the Prima retinal prosthesis, an implant that restores form vision by projecting laser images. Science acquired the underlying technology from French developer Pixium in late 2022.

Clinical trials showed blind patients reading books and playing Sudoku using Prima, proving the success of form vision restoration. Max Hodak planned next to expand the monochrome, narrow-field vision to color and deeper grayscale.

Age-related macular degeneration represents a massive addressable market for Science. The disease affects one in two people with early-stage symptoms by age 80, and one in ten people by age 85.

Science manages a three-part development pipeline focused on working vision, bio-hybrid neural interfaces that graft living neurons, and a perfusion medicine program. Max Hodak expects these programs to mature over ten to fifteen years.

Max Hodak structured Science as a technology company rather than a traditional East Coast biotech firm, raising capital primarily from tech venture capital. Bob Nelson was the only biotechnology investor pitched during the Series A round.

Max Hodak argues interfacing directly with the brain bypasses the complex molecular biology of traditional drug discovery. Physical electrode stimulation can immediately enable quadriplegics to control computers, offering massive effect sizes compared to small-molecule development.

Ocular treatment pricing precedents are high due to development costs, with a mid-2010s retinal prosthesis reimbursing at $150,000 per patient. A contemporary gene therapy that slows retinal degeneration reimburses at nearly $500,000 per eye.

Max Hodak supports the Platonic representation hypothesis, noting that neural recordings in animal brains align geometrically with the internal mathematical representations of large AI models. This suggests artificial networks and biological brains converge on the same physical data manifolds.

Human information processing is constrained by a deeply evolved cognitive bottleneck of roughly 10 bits per second. Max Hodak argues this limit restricts communication through language, meaning high-bandwidth BCI keyboards may not fundamentally speed up thought translation.

Max Hodak asserts that substrate independence and mind uploading require phenomenal continuity to preserve identity. Users will accept physical drift in their selfhood over time, but a non-continuous software copy fails to truly preserve the individual.

Max Hodak views other organs as support systems designed to keep the brain functioning. Science aims to mitigate the two leading causes of death, cardiovascular disease and cancer, by preserving brain health rather than solely targeting peripheral biology.