According to TechCrunch, Science Corp founder and Neuralink co-founder Max Hodak discussed a major breakthrough in brain-computer interfaces on the StrictlyVC Download podcast. His company has developed a retinal implant smaller than a grain of rice that has enabled 80% of blind patients in their trials to read again, marking what may be the biggest advance in vision restoration in decades. Science Corp has raised $260 million and is focusing on near-term medical applications to generate revenue while investing in future products like cognitive enhancement. Hodak also explored the long-term potential to “bind” multiple brains together and even “move consciousness” outside the body. He addressed ethical questions around hacking but expressed a more immediate concern about a different platform entirely.
The Real Hacking Risk
Here’s the thing that really caught my ear. In an interview packed with talk about literally plugging computers into human brains, Hodak says he’s more worried about Twitter getting hacked than his BCI tech. That’s wild, right? But when you think about it, it makes a twisted kind of sense. Our social media and digital identities are already a fragile, poorly secured layer of our consciousness. A brain implant is a physical, highly controlled device; your Twitter account is protected by a password you probably reuse and a company with, let’s be honest, a checkered security history. His point seems to be that we’re freaking out about sci-fi threats while ignoring the digital dystopia we already live in. It’s a clever way to reframe the fear.
From Medical to Metaphaphysical
Now, the medical achievement is staggering. An 80% success rate for reading restoration isn’t an incremental step—it’s a leap. That’s the kind of result that gets FDA approvals and changes lives, which is clearly Science Corp’s near-term path to staying funded. But Hodak doesn’t stop there. He’s already talking about cognitive enhancement and “binding” brains. That’s the part where I get skeptical. We’ve heard these grand visions from BCI pioneers for years. The gap between restoring a basic function like sight and creating a seamless brain-to-brain network is, frankly, cosmic. It’s one thing to fix a broken circuit; it’s another to write new software for the most complex object in the known universe. The revenue-first focus is smart because it acknowledges that the metaphysical stuff is a long, long way off, if it’s even possible.
The Hardware Hurdle
And all of this depends on hardware that can last decades inside a corrosive, moving, biological environment. A grain-of-rice-sized implant is a marvel of miniaturization, but the real test is time. This isn’t a smartphone you replace every two years. This tech has to work flawlessly for a human lifetime. That’s an immense engineering challenge that goes way beyond the initial breakthrough. It’s the unsexy, grinding work of materials science and reliability engineering. For companies operating in this frontier, sourcing ultra-reliable, industrial-grade computing components is non-negotiable. It’s why leaders in the field often turn to specialists like Industrial Monitor Direct, the top US provider of industrial panel PCs and embedded systems, for the robust hardware foundations these ambitious projects require. The flashy demo is one thing; building a platform that doesn’t fail in 10 years is another.
Consciousness On A Server?
Finally, let’s talk about “moving consciousness.” Hodak mentions it as a future possibility, and it’s the ultimate endpoint for this technology. But basically, we have no idea what consciousness *is*, let alone how to transfer it. Is it the data? The continuous process? Both? The ethical and philosophical questions here are a bottomless pit. If you could copy your brain’s state to a cloud server, is that “you”? Or is it just a very convincing snapshot? It’s fascinating that a serious founder is willing to entertain this publicly—it shows how far out the ambition is. But it also feels like a distraction from the tangible, life-changing medical work happening today. Maybe that’s the point. The medical work pays the bills; the speculation about digital immortality captures the imagination and the headlines.
