Probably because they weren't the only company working on this and selling products and even at $500K they weren't making money: it faced financial headwinds.

Probably because they weren't the only company working on this and selling products and even at $500K they weren't making money: it faced financial headwinds. Second Sight was selling the Argus II for around $150,000 in the United States—about five times as much as other neuromodulation devices, according to Greenberg. But even so, he says, the company was losing money: “With all the overhead of sales and regulatory people, it wasn’t profitable.”