- Neuralink Co-founder Max Hodak announced a mysterious departure in earlier 2021.
- Max Hodak raised $47 million from 10+ investors for the startup company [Science corp].
- Alan Mardinly [Director of biology, Neuralink] and Corey Wolin [Hardware Engineer, Neuralink] stated they left Neuralink in August 2021.
- McCaleb is now appointed as a director of Hodak’s startup company.
Max Hodak, the co-founder of Neuralink, suddenly announced his withdrawal from the company. Many controversies arose with the title saying, “Did Elon musk fired the president of Neuralink.”
It was still indistinct news whether Max Hodak left the company with the disagreements with the partner co-founder Elon Musk or performed slowly on the clinical trials.
According to the sources, Max Hodak is working for the new startup company called “Science Corp,” Until July, he managed to raise $47 million from 14 investors. This amount is not as much compared to the net worth of the Neuralinks [$300+ million].
But it could be challenging and furious competition between the companies in the rising neurotech market.
Max Hodak grasped top employees from Neuralink
The startup company founder Hodak provided opportunities to the employees working at the top positions of Neuralink.
- Alan Mardinly [Director of biology, Neuralink]
- Corey Wolin [Hardware Engineer, Neuralink]
They both posted the same link to the Science Corporation’s hiring page with a plead to “join early,” they also changed the employment status in the LinkedIn account to announce that they had left Neuralink in early August 2021.
Statement by Corey Wolin was-
“We are hiring, chance to join early in the new startup company, which will work in the intersection of biology and electronics.”
What’s Science Corp is focusing on?
The new startup company by Max Hodak aims to focus on the neuroscience technology that holds gene-editing and optogenetics.
The term “optogenetics” means a method that uses light to amplify molecular occurring in a targeted way.
Alan Mardinly’s previous experiments involved natural illumination sensory receptors in fetching and encoding brain activities.
The hiring page of the Science Corp is looking for specialists in CRISPR genome editing [a group of technology that can change an organism’s DNA]. The company is seeking especially those who have an intense talent in bioengineering.
This work is similar to Neuralink, but the only difference was that they want those people who have a natural talent in bioengineering.
It may be possible that Max Hodak and former top employees of Neuralink may have left the volatile nature man Elon Musk.
McCaleb was appointed as the director of the Science Corp by Max Hodak
The most remarkable person is Jed McCaleb, founder of the legendary cryptocurrency exchange Mt. Gox [after the departure of McCaleb in 2014]. The attackers stole 850,000 bitcoins, which was worth $40 billion if measured with today’s prices. This incident took place when he was still a minor shareholder.
McCaleb was later involved in an ongoing SEC lawsuit for Ripple Labs, and he served as CTO of the block chain task. Currently, McCaleb is serving as CTO of the cryptocurrency startup stellar.
“Comprehensive Engineering Developments,” next project says Astera Institute.
A nonprofit institute stated that McCaleb would be stepping towards another project focused on the overall engineering developments.
In early June of this year, the Astera Institute is searching to verify and validate the machine learning models of brain activities. Coincidently it may be possible that Astera is involved in Hodak’s project of his new startup company [Science Corp].
In 2020, Max Hodak was appointed with Neuralink’s project of clinical trials in people with paralysis. Due to some unrealistic expectations, several employees of Neuralink complained to STAT news, which was still to take place a year later.
Did Elon Musk silently fire the President of Neuralink?
According to the top sources, Max Hodak and Neuralink both rejected to confirm the news that whether “he was fired or he left.”
With Hodak’s resign, the Neuralink company was working for a quarter without any appointed leader. It was only Elon which is already distributed in many other recognizable projects [SpaceX and Tesla].
Some sources reveal that Max Hodak conflicted with Elon Musk, The Neuralink’s working schedule was already in too much delay, it could be possible that it’s not the first time Musk clashed with the co-founder because only two co-founders of Neuralink remained up till July 2021, [before five years, there were eight co-founders of Neuralink] but now Hodak, after July 2021 left the company to raise his own startup company.
It’s still unclear how Neuralink will manage because the company hasn’t yet listed any openings for the replacement. It could also be possible that there wasn’t enough peaceful space at Neuralink for having more than one notable personality.
Fortifying the theory above, it’s a void that neither Elon Musk nor Max Hodak currently follow themselves on popular social media platform Twitter. But parody Twitter account of Elon musk is still followed by Hodak.
