GoKawiilScience Corporation, the startup from former Neuralink president and co-founder Max Hodak, has enlisted a top neurobiologist to lead the first U.S. human trials for its biohybrid brain-computer interface.
Dr. Murat Günel, chair of Yale Medical School’s Department of Neurosurgery, has signed on as a scientific adviser after two years of discussions. His goal is to surgically place the first sensor for a future interface — one that will eventually combine lab-grown neurons with electronics — into a patient’s brain.
Science, founded in 2021, completed a $230 million Series C fundraising round last month that valued the company at $1.5 billion. Its most advanced product is PRIMA, a device for restoring vision in people with blindness caused by macular degeneration and similar conditions. Science acquired the technology in 2024 and has advanced it through clinical trials, with plans to make it more widely available in Europe once regulatory approval is obtained, perhaps as soon as this year.
Hodak, however, co-founded the company with a bigger vision in mind: creating reliable communication links between computers and the human brain — both to treat disease and to establish a path toward human enhancement, such as adding entirely new senses to the body. He has dedicated his career to that proposition, from talking his way into a graduate neuroscience lab as a college student, to founding his first biotech computing startup, to building Neuralink alongside Elon Musk.
Neuralink and other organizations have succeeded in using electronic sensors to detect brain activity in patients suffering from ALS, spinal injuries, and other conditions that sever the brain’s communication with the body. Users with implanted devices can control computers or generate words on a screen simply by thinking about them. However, the path to a real market for these devices remains murky, given regulatory challenges and the relatively small number of patients with applicable diagnoses.
For his part, Hodak concluded that the conventional method of influencing the brain with electricity by using metal probes or electrodes is the wrong path forward. While the technology can achieve remarkable results, Günel says these probes cause brain damage that is likely to undermine device performance over time. That limitation led the Science founding team toward a more organic approach.
“The idea of using natural connections through neurons and creating a biological interface between the electronics and the human brain is genius,” Günel told TechCrunch.
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