Vivani Medical will spin off Cortigent, its neurostimulation business, as an independently publicly traded company as it looks to prioritise its portfolio of weight loss drug implants.
While Vivani doubles down in the drug implant arena, the move will allow Cortigent to fully focus on advancing its neuromodulation tech. The goal of the split, Vivani states, is to “create two focused companies dedicated to driving current and future value in their respective therapeutic areas of expertise.”
The share price of Nasdaq-listed Vivani rose by 1.8% at market open compared to a pre-announcement market close yesterday [11 March]. Investor reaction to the company, which has a market cap of $61m, is hard to gauge amid falling US stocks fuelled by the US government’s tariffs.
Vivani was created in 2022 when subdermal drug implant company Nano Precision Medical merged with implantable visual prosthetics company Second Sight Medical Products. The new company created the Cortigent subsidiary to advance its neuromodulation technology.
An initial public offering (IPO) had been planned for Cortigent, with an application even submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2023. Following its announcement to siphon the business as a fully independent company, Vivani has revised its application to SEC via a Form 10 registration statement. The spin-off is slated to complete by or during Q3 2025.
Vivani did not disclose the reasons behind the change in strategy, but the move from merely an IPO to a full separation bodes well for Cortigent’s financial future, with Vivani’s executives confident in the business’s ability to capture market share.
“We believe that the best way to realise the full potential of Cortigent is to enable it to operate independently with a management team dedicated to advancing its proprietary neuromodulation technology and developing medical devices that address human conditions where there is significant unmet medical need,” Vivani’s CEO Adam Mendelsohn said.
The global neuromodulation device market is one of the fastest growing sectors in medtech and is forecast to grow to $12.6bn by 2034, up from $6.3bn in 2024, as per analysis by GlobalData. The report indicates that Medtronic has the largest market share, followed by Boston Scientific and Abbott.
Cortigent’s technology primarily focuses on providing visual perception for blind people. Argus II, one of the businesses’ lead products, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under humanitarian device exemption for a rare form of blindness.
The system, which involved implanting a microelectronic implant into the retina to receive images transmitted through a pair of glasses, was discontinued due to the small patient population. Also in its portfolio is Orion, a cortical visual prosthesis system designed to treat blindness due to glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, and other common causes. The device, which won FDA breakthrough device designation, demonstrated positive efficacy and safety results in an early feasibility study.
Meanwhile, Vivani will focus on advancing its miniature, subdermal glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1RA) implants for chronic weight management and type 2 diabetes. In December 2024, the company initiated a first-in-human trial for the long-lasting exenatide-based implants that are designed to provide comparable efficacy to Novo Nordisk’s popular treatment semaglutide, marketed as Ozempic and Wegovy and improve upon non-adherence.
