Science Corporation raises $230M after retinal implant helps blind patient finish a 300-page novel

Summary

Science Corporation has raised $230M in a Series C, bringing total capital to just under $500M. The company makes a retinal prosthesis chip implanted at the back of the eye to restore vision in patients with geographic atrophy, the advanced form of age-related macular degeneration that destroys high-acuity central vision.

The device works in two parts. Patients wear glasses fitted with a camera and an infrared laser projector. The implant is built from tiny solar panels powered by the projected image, removing the need for a battery or external cable. The laser projects the scene onto the chip, which electrically stimulates the retinal cells that remain intact, bypassing the dead ones to send the signal to the brain.

The surgery takes roughly 90 minutes under local anesthesia, performed by a vitreoretinal surgeon. Patients go home the same day and remove the bandage within 24 hours.

Clinical results

Science completed a major trial last summer. The primary endpoint was at least two lines of improvement on a standard eye chart, and patients averaged significantly better than that. One patient who had not been able to recognize faces in over a decade recently finished a 300-page novel.

Founder Max Hodak is clear that the current device does not restore high-resolution color vision. The implant is 2mm by 2mm with electrodes 0.1mm across, covering a small field roughly like looking through a straw. Patients see sharp but limited images, and the brain stitches shapes into letters and letters into words as the eye moves. The next chip, already in hand, shrinks the electrodes and raises electrode count from 400 to several thousand. Hodak expects new device generations roughly every two years and believes color perception is achievable within the next few iterations.

Market size

AMD affects around 200 million people globally, but the addressable population for the current device is narrower, limited to very late-stage bilateral atrophy. Hodak puts that at roughly 6,500 new patients per year in the U.S., with a backlog of perhaps 150,000 to 200,000 across the U.S. and Europe. A next-generation device covering a larger field of view could expand the eligible population to around 5 million people. Near-term commercial targets are modest, and doing 1,000 implants a year would be considered success at this stage.

Commercialization

Science has submitted for marketing approval in Europe and expects a commercial launch there in the near future, though approval has not yet been granted. The U.S. is a later step. Hodak frames the $230M as the capital needed to reach a self-sustaining business rather than a perpetual research project, with the transition from grant-funded science to recurring revenue as the defining near-term objective.