OpenAI eyes brain implant startup to take on Elon Musk’s Neuralink

ChatGPT creator OpenAI plans to invest in a brain implant startup that aims to merge humans with artificial intelligence, according to a report.

The new venture, Merge Labs, offers competition to Elon Musk’s Neuralink startup, which is building brain-computer interface (BCI) chips that allow people to control computers with their thoughts.

OpenAI is planning to lead a $250 million (£184m) funding round for the new startup, the Financial Times reported, at an estimated valuation of $850m.

Neuralink recently raised $600m at a $9 billion valuation, having begun human trials of its brain chip technology last year on patients with quadriplegia.

Mr Musk has said he wants to implant millions of Neuralink devices into people’s brains over the next decade, with the eventual goal of allowing humans to compete with AI through brain and body augmentation.

open image in gallery

The name of the new BCI startup appears to reference a 2017 blog post by OpenAI co-founder and CEO Sam Altman, who wrote about “the merge” between humans and machines.

“I believe the merge has already started, and we are a few years in,” he wrote, adding that it’s “going to get a lot weirder” and is “probably going to happen sooner than most people think”.

At the time, he estimated that this fusion of human and artificial intelligence will take place at some point between 2025 and 2075.

Since co-founding OpenAI together in 2015, Mr Altman and Mr Musk have since become rivals in the development of AI, with the Tesla boss leaving OpenAI in 2018 and forming his own startup, xAI, in 2023.

That same year, xAI launched a generative AI chatbot called Grok in order to take on OpenAI’s market-leading ChatGPT.

Mr Musk responded to the latest report about Merge Labs, which is yet to be formally announced, with a rolling eyes emoji.

The Independent has reached out to OpenAI for comment.