Hodak Pitches Post-Screen Future at Disrupt

When you picture using a computer, a keyboard, a mouse, or a phone screen probably comes to mind. Max Hodak has spent the better part of a decade betting that picture is about to change. The co-founder of Neuralink and current CEO of Science Corporation will take the Disrupt Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 to make that case directly to a room of more than 10,000 tech leaders, founders, and investors.

His session, titled Beyond Screens, is built around a simple proposition: the next era of technology may not be defined by another piece of glass we stare at, but by interfaces that adapt to us — brain-computer interactions that open new ways of engaging with machines.

A Different Kind of Interface

Hodak's argument doesn't rest on abstract speculation. It draws on work his company has already put into human testing. Science Corporation has enlisted a top neurobiologist to lead the first U.S. human trials for its biohybrid brain-computer interface, and Hodak plans to share what the company has discovered so far during his Disrupt appearance.

The idea behind a biohybrid approach is that the interface isn't purely a rigid electronic implant — it's designed to work with the body's own biology rather than simply sit inside it. That distinction matters for how long sensors can remain functional and how safely they interact with living tissue over time. While the source material does not detail the specific engineering behind the biohybrid design, the company's decision to bring in a senior neurobiologist to run the first U.S. trials suggests it views the clinical path as central to proving the technology works in people, not just in the lab.

Hodak's session is one of more than 250 scheduled across the conference, which returns to Moscone West in San Francisco on October 13-15. Organizers say this year's programming places particular emphasis on building sustainable AI companies, with AI-centric sessions spread across six industry stages.

The Path From Neuralink to Science Corp

Hodak's career has been a running bet that the boundary between people and machines has plenty of room for improvement. He started programming at six years old, studied biomedical engineering at Duke Pratt School of Engineering, and worked his way into Miguel Nicolelis' brain-computer interface lab — an early grounding that still shapes his work today.

He first co-founded Transcriptic, a robotic cloud laboratory for the life sciences. In 2016 he co-founded Neuralink and served as its initial president, helping build the company that brought brain implants into the public imagination. Five years later, in 2021, he founded Science Corporation to develop advanced neural engineering and brain-computer interface technology, with a focus on applications that aid people dealing with vision, cognition, and mobility challenges.

That focus on practical medical applications, rather than general-purpose augmentation, is what separates Science Corp's public positioning from some of the more speculative promises in the brain-computer interface field. The company's stated ambitions extend beyond restoring lost function to actively intervening in disease processes.

Eyesight Restored, and Ambitions Beyond

Science Corp's PRIMA implant has already restored eyesight in people with severe vision loss, according to the company. The system pairs a pair of glasses carrying a tiny camera with a chip implanted in the retina — the camera captures a scene, and the implant beams that visual information back to the eye's remaining neural circuitry.

That's a meaningful milestone for a field that has historically struggled to move from animal studies and small proof-of-concept trials into something resembling a product. It also gives Hodak a concrete demonstration to point to when he argues that direct neural interfaces are no longer purely theoretical.

The company's ambitions don't stop at vision. Hodak has described additional applications for Science Corp's brain-implanted sensors, including helping heal damaged brain cells, warning about seizures, and potentially helping treat conditions as severe as Parkinson's disease. Each of those would represent a substantially harder technical problem than restoring a visual signal, but they sketch out the company's long-term direction.

What the Numbers Show

• $230 million raised in a Series C round
• $1.5 billion valuation following that round
• 2016 — year Hodak co-founded Neuralink
• 2021 — year Hodak founded Science Corporation
• More than 10,000 founders, investors, and startup community members expected at Disrupt
• More than 250 sessions across the conference
• October 13-15 — dates of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 at Moscone West, San Francisco

The funding figures come from the company's Series C round, which valued Science Corp at $1.5 billion. That kind of capital backing is unusual for a neural engineering company and reflects investor confidence that the technology has a path to clinical and commercial viability, not just research value.

A Conference Built Around AI, and One Session That Isn't

Disrupt 2026's stated theme centers on building sustainable AI companies, with AI-focused programming running across six industry stages. Hodak's Beyond Screens session sits somewhat apart from that theme — it's less about what models can do and more about how humans will physically connect to those models as they become more capable.

That framing is deliberate. As AI systems grow more conversational and more capable of acting on a user's behalf, the bottleneck shifts from what the software can do to how quickly and naturally a person can direct it. Keyboards and touchscreens, in that view, are a constraint rather than a given.

Hodak is expected to use his stage time to argue that brain-computer interactions — interfaces that adapt to the user rather than requiring the user to adapt to them — could define the next era of technology. The session is positioned as a chance for founders, investors, and operators in the audience to hear how that shift might affect their own products and roles.

What Hodak Brings to the Stage

Few speakers at a general tech conference have Hodak's specific combination of credentials: a robotic lab company, a high-profile brain implant startup he helped launch, and a second neural engineering company now running human trials in the U.S. That range means his argument won't rest solely on a single product demo.

Neuralink's rise put brain implants into mainstream conversation, and Hodak was there at the start as its initial president. Science Corp represents his attempt to take that same category of technology and apply it first to people with severe medical need — vision loss, seizure risk, neurodegenerative disease — before any broader consumer ambitions.

That sequencing is worth noting. The company's public milestones to date are medical, not consumer. The broader Disrupt lineup includes plenty of AI and startup names, but Hodak's pitch is a longer-horizon one: that the screen, not the implant, is the transitional technology.

Why It Matters Beyond the Stage

For most readers, brain-computer interfaces are still a category they encounter in headlines rather than in daily life. But the direction Hodak is describing has practical implications even in the near term. If a retinal implant can restore sight in people with severe vision loss, the same underlying sensor and stimulation technology could eventually inform treatments for other neurological conditions — an area where existing options are often limited to managing symptoms rather than addressing causes.

For founders and product teams, the more immediate question is strategic. If input methods shift over the next decade, the companies that assume a screen-centric interface will look increasingly like companies that assumed physical keyboards were permanent. That doesn't mean a post-screen world arrives on any particular schedule — the source material offers no timeline for consumer adoption — but it does suggest that interface assumptions are worth revisiting rather than treating as fixed.

There's also a funding signal in Science Corp's $230 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation. Capital at that scale for a neural engineering company indicates investors see a credible path from clinical trials to commercial products. If that bet pays off, the competitive landscape for medical device and interface technology could look meaningfully different within a few years.

Hodak will make his case in person at Disrupt 2026, and the session is framed as a chance to hear how the human-machine interface may change — and what that could mean for a startup, a role, or simply how people interact with the machines they already own. Tickets for the event, running October 13-15 at Moscone West, are currently available, with discounts of up to $200 set to expire September 25, and group registration offering savings up to 30%.