Sam Altman’s new brain venture, Merge Labs, will emerge from a non-profit

CEO of OpenAI A new brain-computer interface startup, Merge Labs, is being created by Sam Altman of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Forest Neurotech, according to a source with direct knowledge of the plans. It will focus on using ultrasound to read brain activity.

Along with Altman, Forest Neurotech CEO Sumner Norman and chief scientific officer Tyson Aflalo are among the founders of Merge Labs, which remains in stealth mode, WIRED has learned.

Although some details of Merge have been previously reported, this is the first time the company has been linked to Forest Neurotech.

Alex Plania, CEO of World — an Altman-backed digital identity company that makes eye-scanning orbiters — is also among the founders, according to the Financial Times. Earlier this year, the Financial Times was first to report that Merge Labs existed and that it was raising $850 million in funds.

The name Merge Labs refers to the Silicon Valley concept of “merging,” the point at which humans merge with machines. Altman wrote about the idea in a 2017 blog post, where he cited predictions that the merger could happen as early as 2025 and offered his own theory that the merger had already begun.

Forest Neurotech, a focused research organization, has been developing an ultrasound-based brain-computer interface for the past few years. The nonprofit was launched in 2023 from philanthropic incubator Convergent Research, which is partly funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, his wife Wendy Schmidt, and billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin.

Forest & Convergent declined to comment.

Michael Shapiro, a Caltech researcher who The Verge reported was selected to work at Merge Labs, currently serves as a consultant for Forest Neurotech. Norman, who earned his PhD in neural engineering at Caltech, worked closely with Shapiro during his postdoctoral work. Afallo, according to LinkedIn, was previously executive director at Caltech’s T&C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center.

Merge will join Elon Musk’s Neuralink and a growing number of other startups developing brain-computer interfaces, devices that collect brain data and turn it into useful outputs. Academic researchers have been experimenting with these devices for decades, but recent advances in artificial intelligence and devices used to record brain signals have made the technology more commercially viable.

According to a Financial Times report earlier this year, Merge was aiming to raise $250 million, and Altman co-founded the company but is not personally invested in it. Altman previously invested in Musk’s company Neuralink.