Merge Labs will compete with Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is developing computer interface chips designed to be implanted in the brain. Musk founded Neuralink in 2016 (although its existence wasn’t known until 2017) and the company has made serious progress.

Sam Altman, the OpenAI co-founder valued at the center of artificial intelligence's rapid ascent, is preparing a challenge to Elon Musk in the high-stakes brain-computer interface market. Altman is co-founding a new venture,

Sam Altman is reportedly entering in brain-computer interface domain through a new startup, Merge Labs. The company is reportedly valued at $850 million. Merge Labs is expected to develop advanced neural interface systems that may soon allow humans to interact with machines based on their thoughts,

Merge Labs venture comes after OpenAI boss Sam Altman said the race to embed AI in humans is ‘going to get a lot weirder’

Sam Altman is preparing to co-found a new company funded by OpenAI that will go up against Elon Musk's Neuralink.

The rollout was even messy enough to spill into betting markets. One 27-year-old day trader, Foster McCoy, pocketed $10,000 in just a few hours by wagering that Google’s Gemini would beat GPT-5 in a popularity contest.

Neuralink is a dominant force in the BCI space, but the arrival of a new, well-capitalised startup in Merge Labs may change the conversation.