OpenAI and its co-founder, Sam Altman, are preparing to establish a brain-computer interface start-up called Merge Labs. The venture will be a direct competitor of Elon Musk’s Neuralink. Altman and Musk, who are currently fighting a war of words on X, will soon have something new to debate.
Financial Times reports that Merge Labs is raising new funds at a $850 million valuation. Most of the new capital is expected to flow from OpenAI’s ventures team.
Elon Musk’s Neuralink start-up is developing brain-computer interface (BCI) chips that enable people to control computers using their thoughts. In January 2024, Neuralink inserted its first device in a patient. Musk wrote on X/Twitter that the “Initial users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs”. He wrote: “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer.”
In May, Neuralink raised $600m at a $9 billion valuation. Musk’s goal is to implant millions of Neuralink devices into people’s brains over the next decade.
The name of Sam Altman’s brain-computer interface draws upon a 2017 blog post that he wrote: “A popular topic in Silicon Valley is talking about what year humans and machines will merge (or, if not, what year humans will get surpassed by rapidly improving AI or a genetically enhanced species). Most guesses seem to be between 2025 and 2075…. I believe the merge has already started, and we are a few years in. Our phones control us and tell us what to do when; social media feeds determine how we feel; search engines decide what we think.”
At one point, Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI in 2015, but the former left in 2018 and formed his own startup, xAI, in 2023. The two are now rivals on the AI front.
Brain implants are not new, and research has been ongoing for decades. Besides Neuralink, there are several companies working in this field. Paradromics, a start-up in Austin, Texas, announced in June that it had implanted its brain-computer interface in a human for the first time. The procedure took place on May 14 at the University of Michigan while the patient was already undergoing neurosurgery to treat epilepsy. The company’s technology was implanted and removed from the patient’s brain in about 20 minutes during that surgery.
Earlier this month, a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) became the first person to control an iPad using thought, according to neurotech company Synchron. It works with a feature inside Apple’s operating system called switch control, which literally switches control to a new input device, like a joystick, or in this case, a brain implant.
