Ex-Neuralink Founder: AI Enhanced Bodies Are Nearly Here w/ Max Hodak | EP #171

0:00Giving sight to the blind is a very biblical statement. Literally. Literally. Max Hodeck. Max Hodeck. From rewriting biology. To brain computer interfaces. Washing the boundaries of what it means to be human. It's crazy how like, biblical miracles eventually come to that company. So I love entrepreneurs who've got this incredible moonshot, but also have real business at the same time. I think we are incredibly close to super exciting breakthroughs, but it has to be supported by something that can fund its state. Let's establish how fast our brain is actually Inputting out putting information so spoken language is about 40 bits per second our attention Processes the world at about 10 bits per second penetrating cortical electrodes like neuralink like brain gate like others Have been able to get five to seven bits per second.

0:49What is a possible future here? All I know is that these devices are technically capable to build and I have no idea what it will feel like but we're gonna find out

1:00the moonshot ladies and gentlemen.

1:09Super pumped about what you have been building. You know, we're gonna talk about two things. One, a product you have today, which is a revenue engine. So I love entrepreneurs who've got this incredible moonshot, right, something that's big and bold, but also have real business at the same time. on the path there. That's extraordinarily unique and critically important when you're actually building a business and you've done you've done both. So before we jump into the BCI of it all, would you talk about Prima? Yeah, personal thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here. And I don't want to under sell the near term product which is still a huge I think you feel.

1:54Yeah, so we have the world's first retinal prosthesis that really works. So there's a couple slides here. There's three layers of cells in the eye that transmit vision from light coming in to a signal going into the brain for patients that have lost the rods and cones in the back of their eyes. So their retinas intact, their brain can see, but the eyes no longer light. And these are typically what type of diseases? This is specifically macular degeneration, especially age -related macular degeneration here in the room. a lot, right? It's pretty prevalent. And retinitis pigmentosa, my mom's dad had retinitis pigmentosa, so I grew up around blindness.

2:30So we have a chip that can be implanted in the back of the eye. So each one of these little honeycomb structures is essentially a solar cell. So the patient puts on glasses that has a laser projector that strikes the implant in the back of the eye to excite the remaining cells in the retina to get the visual signal into the optic nerve at the first possible opportunity beyond the dead photoreceptors. It's a super simple one hour outpatient procedure. The surgeon makes a little blood under the retina, places the chip, and then the patient goes home and recovers in a couple days, can put on these glasses.

3:08We finished a clinical trial last summer. 38 patients in Europe in that trial, there's about 50 people around the world that have had it so far. It's the first time in the history of the world as far as we know that these blind patients have been able to read again And so we're super super excited about this

3:28You know it's interesting because you know giving site to the blind is a very biblical statement literally literally yeah and So I definitely I mean I'm very excited about the the BCI technology that we have coming I think I think one of the things that I've learned is the end state is often obvious, like Ray Kurzweil, in the 90s, he was saying, oh, we would get here. The end state can be inferred. The question is, how do you get there and the kinds of investment that it's going to take to make these technologies work? But I definitely don't want to undersell the right -and -lifes. Let's talk about Primo 4 -second.

4:05If you were going to describe the state of the technology in humans working ready to sell? So the net, so not all I have to be very careful with what I say on that piece. It's not approved yet, but yeah, we're planning to submit for marketing approval in Europe in the next month. We're discussing with the FDA on what exactly that additionally they need to see, but we're hoping to have this on market in definitely the EU and hopefully the US early next year. Amazing. Amazing. And that's a big and that's a big product. How big is that market, the potential total markets? So there's very, it's many billions of dollars a year.

4:43This is, there's very strong reimbursement precedence at a couple hundred thousand dollars, probably around two hundred thousand dollars a patient. In the US, the pair that matters here is Medicare because all of these patients are over 65. In Europe, there's reimbursement precedence around a hundred fifty thousand dollars a patient. There's tens of thousands of patients that this is directly relevant for. the whole population is probably about 250 ,000. If you can get to even reach two or 3 ,000 patients a year, this is a half a billion dollars, three quarters of a billion dollars. I love it when I first.

5:14Entrepreneur describes their, on base single is a billion dollar opportunity. Yeah, but I mean, when you look at AI, what are the companies that get to invest the most, most sustainably? It's the profitable tech companies. Yes. Having to go back to the well every 18 months is a huge strategic disadvantage. I think there's been a ton of capital and enthusiasm that's flown into BCI, but what this base really needs is a company making $100 million or more a year. And until that happens, it'll always be a risk of winter. But I think we are incredibly close to super exciting breakthroughs, but it has to be supported by something that can fund it sustainably.

5:51I think most of you know that the news media is delivering negative news to us all the time because we pay 10 times more attention to negative news than positive news. For me, the only use worthwhile that's true and impacting humanity is the use of science and technology. And that's what I pay attention to. At every week I put out two blogs, one on AI and exponential tech and one on longevity. If this is of interest to you and it's available totally for free, please join me. Subscribe at dmandis .com slash subscribe. That's dmandis .com slash subscribe. Right. Let's go back to the episode. And you've acquired the manufacturing and built up the manufacturing capacity for this, yes?

6:31So we've done two acquisitions including one is a captive MEMS fab in North Carolina. I mean, the vertical integration is essential. I absolutely received the gospel of vertical integration from my former co -founder and Briar Boss. I mean, we routinely void the warranty on million dollar fab tools to place atoms like exactly where we want them and that But being able to do that and also go from design change to surgery in a couple weeks is absolutely enabling at being able to innovate. Fantastic. So, hold that in your mind as a company that is solving something of extraordinary difficulty where the tech is up in operational regulatory approvals coming very shortly, revenues following very shortly thereafter.

7:16And I think that's an extraordinary accomplishment on its own. And now let's move to sort of the grand slam home and run potential. I remember when I was talking to Ray Kurzweil about his predictions. And again, if you Google his predictions, he's got like an 86 % accuracy if you look on Wikipedia. And one of his predictions was high ban with BCI by the early 2030s, like 2033. And I was like, Ray, this one, I don't see it happening in that timeframe. It's just you're wrong about this one. And then I met Max. And I was like, okay, Ray, you're right again. So, Max, just for a moment, I won't linger on it, but you were the co -founder and president of NuralLink.

8:01How long were you there for? About four and a half years. Four and a half years, okay. I wouldn't say this, but I mean, he wouldn't say this, but you know, it's, actually I wouldn't just, I wouldn't even say it. All right. You broke away and founded science. you had a unique idea, which I think is extraordinary. Describe the problem with all the current neural implants. So you've got external BCI, which is looking at EEGs. You've got something under the skull above the doora. Then you have sort of wires placed in the upper parts of the neocortex and you have deep brain stimulation. All those are different types.

8:49But let's talk about products like a neural link and others. What's the challenge they have? Yeah, so there's many, many different ways to try to record and drive activity of neurons throughout the brain. The like neuroscience as a field has been trying to do this for the last 100, almost 150 years. And there's the first thing I want to say is that BCI is a field, not a product. There are many different products that will use many different modalities for different things. But there do seem to be very serious fundamental physics limitations to the types of like the resolution and the accuracy that you can get with purely non -invasive devices.

9:30So then once you start thinking about putting something below the skull, the main approaches that are used today are putting just wires into the brain. The idea there is very simple neurons communicate, they have these electrical fields that they generate. So, if you put an electrode in the brain, you can detect this. There's other groups that are using, they're genetically modifying neurons in the brain to make them light sensitive or make them emit light. And then there's other groups that are interested in using ultrasound. The problems with ultrasound and optogenetics is these really require genetically modifying neurons throughout the brain.

10:04So doing this in an adult human is really pretty tricky. That seems like an on -started for many cases. You're irreversibly modifying these neurons in the brain of adult humans using these viral vectors and they don't get perfectly distributed. And even then, there's still really severe limits to the depth that you can image or the resolution that you can get. Now, the problem with placing wires into the brain, which allow you to get single neurons, is that we are used to these cartoons of neurons floating in space where you can place electrodes safely between them. But the reality is that there's no space in the brain.

10:39The brain is this wet, warm, squished thing. And no matter how small or how flexible your device is, it might look like it's a tiny fraction of a human hair floating off a finger. Every time you place one of these into the brain, you destroy thousands of cells. So that's your typical, that blue line is your typical thickness of a neural electrode. Yeah, some electrode. And now if you have a serious spinal cord injury, destroying 50 ,000 cells in cortex to get five bits per second, or recording from 500 neurons might be totally indicated. But it does mean that you can't scale up this approach to millions of cells.

11:14And that is really what you want in order to get these next generation applications. So I think about like what is an idealized neural interface? I've been thinking about this question really since I've been in fifth grade. And can I set a piece of context for folks? I love that since I've been fifth grade. You heard that right?

11:34How, in terms of bits per second, in terms of broad rate, how would you describe the human brain interface on communications, on some action? So, let's establish how fast our brain is actually inputting out, putting information. So, there's two ways to answer this question. So, the figure of merit for any brain computer interface is a bandwidth in bits per second. And so, there's, this is another way to look at the different approaches. There's groups that are placing stents with electrodes into blood vessels, there's something very elegant about getting into the brain through the body's natural road system, but because of where that limits you and how far you are from the cells, those only get half a bit per second.

12:12Penetrating cortical electrodes like neuralink like brain gait, like others, have been able to get five to seven bits per second. So spoken language is about 40 bits per second. So just to hear that right 40 bits per second is when you and I are speaking right? So neural ink is probably getting how much you think I think that what's been published is about seven bits per second Seven bits per second. Yeah, and It's this is that's an interesting result because if you take all the like many different human languages Summers spoken more quickly and convey less information per token Summers spoken more slowly and convey more information per token But if you plot these it's they all come out to about 40 bits per second There's also a lot of neuroscience evidence that our attention processes the world at about 10 bits per second.

12:58So the amount of information that you can perceive and remember is that there's kind of this involved cognitive bottleneck about 10 bits per second. And so when I think about high bandwidth BCIs, I don't think in terms of communicating faster. I think that you're not going to make it so you can just convey thoughts more quickly, But it might be possible, like getting information into the brain is very straightforward, it is very easy. You can see, you can hear, you can feel, these are much, much more than 40 bits per second, the bandwidth of vision. But you can't get these out of the brain. You can't, for everything that you can perceive, you can imagine, but you can't get imagery out of the brain or audio out of the brain.

13:37And that might be possible. or we think about adding new cortical areas in the sense that even if you're still communicating at 40 bits per second in terms of Number of tokens can you make those much smarter? Can you have skills or knowledge or memory that you think are getting? Like Chinese characters versus a letter or something. So I just want you to get those numbers because maybe you think you communicated megabits or gigabits like your computer does we're at you know 40 bits. 40 bits. Yeah. So when I think about like what is the idealized brain computer interface, the one that would really solve a lot of these problems, the thing I think of if you've seen the Avatar movies is this thing.

14:20It's a big externalized cranial nerve. So all of the information that flows in or out of the brain goes through a relatively small number of wires. There are 12 cranial nerves. The optic nerve is nerve 2. The Vistibulococular nerve that carries hearing and balance is nerve 8. then you've got 31 spinal nerves that connect out to the muscles. Bringing back memories from medical school. And so when we think about our retinal prosthesis, what we really see is a nerve -to -interface. But the question is, could you grow a 13th cranial nerve that has kind of interhemisphoric class bandwidth? Like the bandwidth connects the two hemispheres and this fiber bundle called the corpus chlosum.

14:56Could you have a branch of that that comes out and gives you a USB cable at the end? And so this was an idea that I had back in college, but really was beyond the feel like all of our collectibility build at the time. But the idea that we had is what if we instead of placing something into the brain, we load an electronic device with heavily engineered neurons, stem cell drive neurons, embed them in a hydrogell so that the cells don't go anywhere, and then engraft the wet side of this into the brain. So we, there's no sterile injury to the brain. we don't place any electrical or mechanical parts.

15:30The only thing that penetrates into the brain are the biological processes of these graph cells. But at the far end, you get chemical synapses. And so we can activate these cells optically to fire them selectively. They grow both axons and dendrites so we can get input and output. And we can record from them electrically. So the optical stem and electrical record allows us to avoid crossocks. We can drive all of them at once. And this is a cool device because you can easily make a 100 ,000 electrode device because you're much closer to the cells So you can have much tighter electrode pitch you can load that with a million neurons and that grows in You'll get a billion synapses throughout huge areas of core time really critically important here So if you look at brain gate neural link how many total electrodes are they placing so brain gate places a hundred Neuralink it's so far as placed a thousand.

16:19Okay. We're talking about 100 ,000 or millions of these. And the other thing that's beautiful is that these neural gross, these axons and dendrites, when they grow into the brain, because they're native to the brain, they're not disrupting the tissue, they're pushing it aside. Yeah. So if you were to do this for real, you would see an image that looks like this. This is a mouse brain. You can see at the top, there's a ball of cells where the device was removed for sectional. This is what you did. Yeah, yeah, this is it's yeah, functional in a mouse. And so the the graph cells that we've added are labeled in green, the host neurons of the mouse are in blue.

17:00And the thing that we look carefully, you can see all these little green dots kind of really throughout it. And so what we've seen is that when we engraft these devices, they grow in and they wire up very promiscuously, they kind of form connections everywhere. And then after about four to six weeks, they start undergoing an activity dependent pruning. And so the really interesting possibility there is that how they wire up is not necessarily genetically defined, it can be informationally defined based on the types of activity that you're getting in the device. And then in addition to kind of growing down and wiring up throughout cortex, the first layer on the surface of the brain, cortical air one is a white matter track.

17:37It's these long projection. It's like this highway between different areas of brain and we often see in the devices that will get a fiber bundle that will follow that for millimeters. And as mouse brain is very small, but we see these things project all the way through to some cortical structures. And where these neurons and dendrites grow and they wire and then they connect and where they don't, they die off. Yeah, they'll retract. I mean, so the cells mostly don't die, but they'll retract the axon growth cones and the dendritic arbor, yeah. Everybody, I hope you're enjoying this episode. You know, earlier this year, I was joined on stage at the 2025 Abundance Summit by a Rockstar group of entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors, focused on the vision and future for AGI, humanoid robotics, longevity, blockchain, basically the next trillion dollar opportunities.

18:29If you weren't at the Abundance Summit, it's not too late. You can watch the entire Abundance Summit online by going to exponentialmastery .com. It's exponentialmastery .com. So this is, we have these, this is the kind of looking at one of the chips. There's these cells loaded in these trenches. And here this is a Z -stack. So each frame is starting at the surface and it's looking deeper and deeper into the brain. You can see the circles of the cell bodies on the surface, all of the green that we see are the graft neurons. But you can see the shadows of the blood vessels in these later layers.

19:04And so this is super cool because when you place an electrode into the brain, you always get bleeding. And if you hit a descending blood vessel, you could stroke out a whole mini column. Here, these grow in around the blood vessels. The capillary is remodeled around it. And so this is like a really, it's a perfectly biocompatible way to get chemical synapses. And we see these things even where it looks like it's fallen off. you see that the processes of these cells growing in. The theme of this event this year's summit is convergence. What technologies have to converge here to make this possible?

19:42A lot of this was enabled by recent advances in cell engineering. So one of the things that we have to do is hide the graph cells from the immune system. We do a lot of editing to these cells. If we were to do this on a per patient basis because the immune system would have to recognize them, this would take over a year and be prohibitively expensive. There's been a lot of advancement recently making what we call hypoe immunogenic stem cells. The whole CRISPR toolbox and a lot of other, there's technologies now like small molecule or kill switches. So we can make it that if you take a vitamin, the graph cells will die so you can keep an eye on them.

20:21Once you've hidden them from the immune system, you kind of want that built in. When these go into human states, they'll be by far the most heavily edited cell therapy to reach people. And as human material sciences. And then materials. Yeah. It's materials like silicon carbide, big improvements on the materials. There's, we talk it in the BCI field, we talk about the smartphone dividend. We rely heavily on the same tech stack that smartphones and wearables build on. But Apple and Samsung and others have poured over $100 billion on to that. our field is too small to afford that today, but we get to build on that, and that has really been enabling and has really advanced a lot in the last few years.

21:00Talk to me about where, when this enters primates and potentially humans, and when can I get mine? Yeah, so we currently have some primates getting trained up on behavior. So you're training them in advance, to understand? Yeah, we're training them in advance. We also need to figure out things like how well can they reason, which actually hasn't been that well studied in many cases. We're hoping to do the first primate and graph in a few months later this year. So going into primates this year. It'll be in a couple months, I mean, which is amazing. Right. I mean, once your operational in primates, you're effectively other than regulatory prohibitions, functional in here.

21:42Yeah, we'll be able to prove the neuroscience that is like the big questions for humans and primates. And the first humans to get this will almost certainly be for stroke. And if you'd asked me those three weeks ago, I would have said I thought that it would be four or five years before the first human will get it. I actually think this is not going to be much faster. I think there might be a collaboration that allows this to go to humans a lot faster than I'd realized. And again, that'll be almost certainly for stroke. And the primates are actually a pretty good model of human stroke patients because a human that's lost a corticleria can be modeled by a monkey that never had it in the first place.

22:16And if you can restore that capability, then there's an argument that you'll be able to do it in humans. And the other thing we'll say is from the beyond stroke rehabilitation or adding these capabilities to humans, when we think about scaling this up, I see this as a way to redraw the borders around the brain. Your head has two hemispheres. These are connected by a fiber bundle called the corpus colosum that gives you the experience of one agent in the head. but really you've got two subbrains that are mostly independent. And people have, like a long time ago, they don't do this so much anymore.

22:51They used to cut the corpus close from this connection in epilepsy patients to prevent a seizure from spreading across the hemispheres. And so you know that if you cut that, you really get something that looks like two agents in one head. And there's a natural example of going the other way. There's a pair of twins in Canada, the Hogan twins, that have one head with four hemispheres. and they can share meaningful elements of their consciousness and there's elements of task transfer between and so I think the way to conceptualize this is imagine if this was a tech product and that might be coming a lot sooner so like we know this must be possible because nature has done it and hoping to have this I mean, you know, humans hopefully pretty soon.

23:34which is pretty extraordinary. Let's give it up for that, huh?

23:40Max, I want to dive a little bit further about what will this mean? So this becomes enabled other than me being able to think in Google or sort of watch a 4K video with my eyes closed. What does this actually mean in terms of increasing intelligence connecting to AI? What is a possible future here? Yeah, I mean, I, for a lot of my life, I always felt like I could see the future. And I've got this event horizon somewhere between 2030 and 2035 now that is just impossible to see past.