OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is reportedly planning to invest in a brain implant startup that aims to merge humans with artificial intelligence. The new venture, named Merge Labs, would compete directly with Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is developing brain-computer interface (BCI) chips.
According to the Financial Times, OpenAI intends to lead a $250 million (£184 million) funding round for Merge Labs, valuing the startup at approximately $850 million. Neuralink, by contrast, recently raised $600 million at a $9 billion valuation and has begun human trials of its BCI technology on patients with quadriplegia.
Elon Musk has stated his ambition to implant millions of Neuralink devices in human brains over the next decade, with the ultimate goal of enabling humans to compete with AI through brain and body augmentation. The name Merge Labs appears to reference a 2017 blog post by OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, who wrote about “the merge” between humans and machines.
In that post, Altman said: “I believe the merge has already started, and we are a few years in,” adding that it is “going to get a lot weirder” and “probably going to happen sooner than most people think.” He estimated the fusion of human and artificial intelligence would occur between 2025 and 2075.
Altman and Musk co-founded OpenAI in 2015 but have since become rivals in AI development. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and formed his own AI startup, xAI, in 2023, which launched a generative AI chatbot called Grok to compete with ChatGPT. Musk responded to the Merge Labs report with a rolling eyes emoji on social media.
