Mar 9, 2026 · 53m · y-combinator
The Future Of Brain-Computer Interfaces · Y Combinator
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In this episode of Y Combinator's 'How to Build the Future,' host Garry Tan interviews Max Hodak, Founder and CEO of Science and former President of Neuralink, to explore groundbreaking advancements in brain-computer interfaces, vision restoration, bio-hybrid neural grafts, and hard-tech engineering.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. The partners hold 14.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
The partners as informed peer 3.2 Guest teaching 5.0 Guest disagreement 0.8 The partners pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is the partners, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 36:39 Dismissing stochastic parrot critics
Max aggressively rejects the conventional dismissal of AI models as glorified autocompletes, stating plainly that critics making those claims do not know what they are talking about.
Hardest push from the partners ▶ 40:44 Rejecting the withdrawal of life supportGarry directly challenges the hospital's utilitarian calculus when hearing that an ECMO patient was removed from donor lists despite being conscious and functional.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 20:00 Neural compression stack in the retinaMax delivers a precise technical explanation of why 100M bipolar cells preserve bitmapped spatial imagery while 1.5M optic nerve ganglion cells represent an unmapped 100x compressed codec.
The partners hold their own ▶ 36:15 Connecting cortical representations to latent spacesGarry demonstrates strong technical acumen by identifying that Max's description of inferotemporal object maps is isomorphic to machine learning latent spaces, steering the conversation toward AI-neuroscience convergence.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | The partners as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | The partners pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Science's Vision Restoration Technology and Clinical Trial | 2 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Garry prompts Max with broad introductory questions about Science's recent clinical trial and the fundamentals of BCIs. Max educates the audience on the retinal implant mechanics and bypassing damaged photoreceptors. | |
| BCI Modalities, Risk vs. Reward, and Future Augmentation | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Garry draws an analogy between capability restoration in AI and future human augmentation. Max reframes the conversation around practical risk-reward calculations, bandwidth limitations of current motor decoders, and aging as the primary initial driver for implants. | |
| Neuroplasticity, Learning with Feedback, and Brain Energy States | 3 | 7 | 1 | 0 | Garry asks whether BCIs require early childhood brain plasticity. Max breaks down common misconceptions regarding critical developmental periods versus lifelong feedback-driven cortical plasticity. | |
| Qualia of Vision Restoration and Conjoined Twins Case Study | 2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Garry asks about the subjective experience (qualia) of visual restoration. Max details phantom percepts during rehab and references Canadian craniopagus conjoined twins to explore shared conscious bandwidth. | |
| The 10-Year Vision: Neural Engineering vs. Drug Discovery | 2 | 5 | 2 | 0 | Garry asks where the technology stands on a 5-to-10-year horizon. Max delivers a pointed critique of traditional pharmaceutical drug discovery, arguing that neural engineering offers fundamentally higher empirical success rates. | |
| Comparing Second Sight to Science's Bipolar Cell Approach | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Garry recalls earlier attempts to stimulate the optic nerve with electricity. Max analyzes why Second Sight's epiretinal stimulation produced phosphenes rather than cohesive form vision. | |
| The Brain's API and the Unification of AI and Neuroscience | 4 | 7 | 1 | 0 | Garry relates biological signals to software inputs and outputs. Max provides an in-depth breakdown of the retinal compression stack and explains how Science isolated the bipolar cell layer and developed hyper-sensitive optogenetic proteins. | |
| Max's Early Inspirations and Vision for Consciousness and BCI | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Garry inquires about Max's transition from software to biotechnology. Max challenges the popular framing that BCI is merely an adjunct to AI, arguing BCI is fundamentally about decoding consciousness and human health. | |
| The Biotech Takeoff Era and Science's Three Pillars | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Garry draws an analogy between early retinal chips and the Altair 8800 launching the personal computer revolution. Max agrees and highlights that biotech has transitioned from incremental progress into a true takeoff era. | |
| Bio-Hybrid Neural Interfaces and Living Neuron Grafts | 3 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Garry asks how bio-coupling serves as a next-generation neural interface. Max explains Science's hypoimmunogenic stem-cell-derived neurons that form biological grafts rather than requiring permanent metal wires or in vivo genetic modifications. | |
| Lessons from Neuralink and Motor Cortex Representations | 3 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Garry asks about finding connection ports in the brain and operational lessons from Neuralink. Max describes the primary motor cortex representation and how direct proximity to motor synapses simplifies decoding. | |
| Brain Latent Spaces, Abstract Representations, and AI Convergence | 6 | 4 | 3 | 0 | When Max describes high-dimensional object representations in inferotemporal cortex, Garry connects this to machine learning latent spaces. Max enthusiastically validates this and dismisses critics who label AI models as simple stochastic autocompletes. | |
| Motor Decoding History, Transcutaneous Risks, and the Smartphone Dividend | 3 | 5 | 1 | 0 | Garry asks about historical motor decoding. Max explains that closing the skin to prevent transcutaneous infection was enabled by commercial smartphone microelectronics. | |
| Science's Vessel Project, ECMO, and Organ Perfusion Innovation | 3 | 6 | 2 | 1 | Garry asks about Science's Vessel organ perfusion program. Max recounts a tragic ECMO case study and criticizes the medical establishment's reluctance to view perfusion as a destination therapy. | |
| The Founding of Neuralink and Working with Elon Musk | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Garry asks about the founding of Neuralink and working with Elon Musk. Max shares the backstory of Sam Altman's email, the Duke neuroscience network, and developing flexible polymer threads. | |
| Advice for Hard Tech Founders and the Oral Tradition of Silicon Valley | 3 | 4 | 1 | 0 | Garry asks for advice tailored to prospective hard-tech founders. Max reflects on the slog of his first company, Transcriptic, and emphasizes the value of learning from elite Silicon Valley operators through oral tradition. | |
| Looking Ahead to 2035 and Episode Conclusion | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Garry asks about the long-term future. Max sets a personal predictive event horizon at 2035, speculating on extreme longevity and the distinct parallel trajectories of AI and brain-to-brain interfaces. |
Statements from this episode (41)
Hodak: Science completed clinical trial published in NEJM in 2025
“We finished a big clinical trial last year, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine in the fall.”
Hodak: Science conducted a clinical trial across 17 sites in Europe
“There's a big clinical trial in Europe across 17 sites, and there's a huge effect.”
Hodak: Science is submitting its retinal implant for market approval this year
“So we are submitting for approval now. It's not approved on, on the market yet. Hope to have that later this year.”
Hodak: BCIs will be a broad medical category, not a single device
“There are many types of BCIs. So it's, there, it really is going to be a category like pharma. It's not one product. I don't think there's going to be like the VCI that people get. And there are different modalities that will work for different things.”
Hodak: Ultrasound BCIs could enable digital Ambien or digital Adderall
“One of the things that I think will be possible with ultrasound is like a digital Ambien or like a digital Adderall. So can you like stimulate part of the brain to cause focus or sleep and things like that? Would not surprise me if that was possible. And that …”
Hodak: Current cortical motor decoders achieve only around 10 bits per second
“Spoken word is like 40 bits per second. You can, many people can type in the like 20, twenty-ish bits. And so the 10 bit per second cortical motor decode is like not going to make your life better. I wouldn't get serious brain surgery for that.”
Hodak: Restorative BCIs will eventually surpass baseline human capabilities
“My view on this is not that I think healthy, 30 year olds are going to be getting these soon, but eventually many people become patients. Aging is like the correlate of kind of everything getting worse. And so there's some critical age where it kind of crosses…”
Adults cured of congenital cataracts struggle to process visual information
“There actually are some cases of patients that were born blind who but it wasn't it wasn't a loss of the optic nerve, it wasn't something in the brain, but they had congenital cataracts, so their vision was blurry from birth, and they were never able to really…”
Humans can learn to control individual cortical neurons within minutes via feedback
“If I put an electrode almost anywhere in your brain and then wake you up in during surgery, And I show you a flashing light that is, that flashes proportionally to how much that neuron is firing, at least almost anywhere in cortex. Within a couple of minutes, …”
Early BCIs used fixed weights and let the brain learn cursor control
“In the first experiments for this, they actually didn't fit anything at all. They just took a couple, they took two neurons or a handful of neurons and fixed the weights. So it said, when this neuron fires more, we're going to go up the screen. When this neuro…”
Hodak: Prima implant produces normal black-and-white vision in blind patients
“The qualia of Prima is, is normal sight. It's black and white. It's only a, it's a small field of view, but it's vision.”
Hodak: Ultra-high-bandwidth bio-hybrid neural interfaces will eventually be built
“The deeper question is like, what is the qualia of like a brain to brain of like an ultra high bandwidth, like a bio hybrid neural interface. And that is just like, I don't like impossible to imagine. I, those devices will get built and we're going to find out…”
Hodak: BCIs will achieve native 20/20 vision and color within 10 years
“I mean, I do think that you can get to close to native acuity, so kind of like your normal twenty-twenty vision. We're definitely not there yet, but I see a path to get there and be able to get Color and fill in a lot of the field of view. To be clear that it'…”
Hodak: Humanity is fundamentally ineffective at pharmaceutical drug discovery
“Humanity isn't very good at drug discovery. Every now and then you kind of find a thing. It's amazing. Like you find a GLP one or you find like there's every, like there's a handful of drugs that are, we were lucky to find, but it's much more common that you s…”
Hodak: Science retinal implant allowed a blind patient to read eye charts
“And with our retinal prosthesis that we, what we saw in the trial was we can take a patient who's been unable to see faces for a decade and allow them to read every letter on an eye chart.”
Hodak: Science trial achieved the first coherent form vision restoration
“As far as I know, our clinical trial was the first time ever that form vision had been, like, had created, like, a coherent image in the mind's eye of a person.”
Hodak: Science implant will treat retinitis pigmentosa and Stargardt disease
“One of the nice things about our device is that it doesn't We're somewhat agnostic to the reason that you lost the photoreceptors, and so we think it'll also work for retinitis pigmentosa, for Stargardt's, for these other indications.”
Hodak: Science is starting a clinical trial for inherited retinal diseases
“We're actually just about to start a new clinical trial on, on inherited retinal disease which affects much younger people.”
Hodak: The human brain is almost literally an information-processing computer
“Well, I mean, the brain is a computer, and it's gonna, saying that it's gonna get me yelled at by some corner of the field, but I think, like, I think that you can take that, like, almost literally. It's a very different architecture than, like, a, like a von …”
Hodak: Neuroscience is learning more from AI research than vice versa
“But I think one of the interesting things that's come out of progress in artificial intelligence is we're seeing this big unification in neuroscience and AI. I think we're actually learning a lot from AI research, more than I think we thought we would learn fr…”
Hodak: BCI progress is limited by hardware, not neuroscience complexity
“Brain-computer interface research and development is limited by your ability to record and stimulate these signals. The neuroscience, comparatively, is actually pretty simple. As soon as you can record the signals, we've very quickly figured out what, we talk …”
Hodak: Directly stimulating retinal bipolar cells produces images in the mind
“It was an empirical discovery of our study that if you excite the bipolar cells with an image, you get an image in the mind's eye, because that is clearly the critical processing step in the retina that you wanted to preserve.”
Hodak: Science found optogenetic proteins sensitive to ambient indoor office lighting
“What we were able to do were find optogenetic proteins that are so sensitive that they're sensitive to like indoor office lighting”
Hodak: Science's optogenetic retinal therapy is five to seven years from translation
“And then we could target them to the bipolar cells, but that still has like five to seven years of clinical translation away if it ends up working, and there's a bunch of Pitfalls it could run into along the way”
Hodak: BCI is primarily a longevity and healthcare story, not AI merger
“There's this meme out there that BCI is an artificial intelligence adjacent story and that the goal is to, I mean, you have to merge humans and machines, and I do think that there's something to that. But I think the more immediate thing here is that I see BCI…”
Hodak: The ultimate end of brain-computer interfaces is conscious machines
“If the end of the quest of artificial intelligence are super intelligent machines, then I think the end of the BCI quest are actually conscious machines.”
Hodak: The Prima electrical stimulation retinal implant cannot treat glaucoma
“One of the diseases that Prima or electrical similar doesn't treat is glaucoma, which is loss of the optic nerve itself.”
Hodak: Science has universal stem cells hidden from the immune system
“So we there's, it's one cell line and the, probably the single deepest area of IP on this is that we've hidden them from the immune system. So we're one of a really small number of companies that have, I think like pretty convincing, what we call hypoimmunogen…”
Hodak: Optogenetic BCI approaches rely on risky, irreversible gene therapies
“We also don't need to genetically modify the, like, your brain. Some of the other ideas out there, for example, using optogenetics or things like ultrasound, this requires using a gene therapy to genetically modify the neurons in your brain, which First of all…”
Hodak: Science's neural grafts formed biological brain connections in animal models
“But it comes with the potential of growing throughout the brain, forming biological connections all over the place. And I mean, that's what we've seen in, in the animal models. That's not in humans yet”
Hodak: Internal representations in AI models closely resemble biological brain patterns
“When you train AI models, like image models or, and even language models the representations that you get inside them look a lot like the representations you see in the brain.”
Hodak: Critics who call AI stochastic parrots do not understand AI
“The whole idea, like there's these things that are like stochastic parrots or glorified autocompletes, like these people just don't know what they're talking about.”
Hodak: Neuroscientists transition to AI because artificial models are easier to study
“Many people in neuroscience have gone over to AI because they're basically still doing neuroscience, but it's just way easier to do it on the models.”
Hodak: BCI advances rely on consumer tech investments from Apple and Samsung
“Like BCI couldn't have done this on its own, but Apple and Samsung and others have poured epic amounts of money onto making these types of electronics exist in the world so that people like us can use them.”
Hodak: Bio-hybrid BCIs are only necessary for high-end medical applications
“And I think biohybrid in particular is only really necessary for some of like the very highest end things. And on the flip side, it will be harder to deploy for many other important medical needs and important applications along the way. And we'll probably be …”
Hodak: A major organ perfusion firm makes more from private jet logistics
“Like one of the big companies in the space, it turns out that they're like private jet logistics business is bigger than their medical device business.”
Hodak: Musk founded Neuralink to upgrade humanity against AI risks
“Elon, he, I mean, he saw what was coming in AI, like, very much more clearly than many other people much earlier, and I think the implications of, like, if you gotta, this can't be a separate thing from humanity, and that needs to emerge somehow, I think that …”
Hodak: Earth's history shows that greater intelligence is inherently dangerous
“Humanity has totally dominated the planet, And we keep our closest living relatives in glass boxes so they don't go extinct. And so there's a real history here of greater intelligence being very dangerous.”
Hodak: Running startups is an oral tradition learned from key cultures
“Running a startup is an oral tradition. There have been a couple of nucleating times in history where, like, a really remarkable group of people have kind of figured it out from scratch. Like, I think PayPal was like this, but almost always beyond that, it's l…”