OpenAI and its co-founder Sam Altman are preparing to back a company which will compete with Elon Musk’s Neuralink by connecting human brains with computers, heightening the rivalry between the two billionaire entrepreneurs.
The new venture, called Merge Labs, is raising new funds at a $850mn valuation, with much of the new capital expected to come from OpenAI’s ventures team, according to three people with direct knowledge of the plans.
Altman has encouraged the investment and will help launch the project alongside Alex Blania, who runs World, an eyeball-scanning digital ID project also backed by the OpenAI chief, said two of the people.
Altman will co-found the company but not have a day to day role in the new project, they added.
Merge is one of a slate of young companies looking to take advantage of recent advances in artificial intelligence to build more useful brain-computer interfaces.
Its name comes from what many in Silicon Valley describe as ‘the merge’, a moment when humans and machines come together.
Altman wrote a lengthy blog on the topic in 2017, speculating that moment could come as soon as 2025. This year, he suggested in another blog post that we could soon have “high-bandwidth brain-computer interfaces” as a result of recent technological advances.
The company aims to raise $250mn from OpenAI and other investors, although the talks are at an early stage. Altman will not personally invest.
The new venture would be in direct competition with Neuralink, founded by Musk in 2016, which seeks to wire brains directly to computers.
Musk and Altman co-founded OpenAI, but Musk left the board in 2018 after clashing with Altman and the two have since become fierce rivals in their pursuit of artificial intelligence.
Musk launched his own AI start-up, xAI, in 2023, and has been attempting to block OpenAI’s conversion from a non-profit in the courts. Musk donated much of the initial capital to get OpenAI off the ground.
Neuralink is leading a pack of so-called brain-computer interface companies, while a number of start-ups, such as Precision Neuroscience and Synchron, have been racing to catch up.
Neuralink earlier this year raised $650mn at a $9bn valuation, and it is backed by investors including Sequoia Capital, Thrive Capital and Vy Capital. Altman had previously invested in Neuralink.
