OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s new brain-computer interface startup, Merge Labs, is being spun out 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, WIRED has learned, Forest Neurotech’s CEO Sumner Norman and chief scientific officer Tyson Aflalo are among the cofounders of Merge Labs, which is still in stealth mode.
While some details of Merge have previously been reported, this is the first time the company has been linked to Forest Neurotech.
According to the Financial Times, Alex Blania, the CEO of World—an Altman-backed digital identity company that makes an eye-scanning orb—is also among the cofounders. Earlier this year, the Financial Times was the first to report on the existence of Merge Labs and that it was raising money at a valuation of $850 million.
The name Merge Labs refers to the Silicon Valley concept of “the merge,” the point when humans meld with machines. Altman wrote about the idea in a 2017 blog post, in which he cited predictions that the merge could happen as early as 2025 and offered his own theory that it had already started.
A so-called focused research organization, Forest Neurotech has been working on an ultrasound-based brain-computer interface for the past few years. The nonprofit launched in 2023 out of the philanthropic incubator Convergent Research, which is funded in part by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, his wife Wendy Schmidt, and billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin.
Forest and Convergent declined to comment.
Mikhail Shapiro, a Caltech researcher who has, The Verge has reported, been tapped for Merge Labs, is currently an adviser to Forest Neurotech. Norman, who earned his PhD in neural engineering at Caltech, worked closely with Shapiro during his postdoctoral work; Aflalo, according to his LinkedIn, was previously the 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 that are developing brain-computer interfaces, devices that collect brain data and convert it into useful outputs. Academic researchers have been experimenting with these devices for decades, but recent advances in artificial intelligence and the hardware used to record brain signals have made the technology more commercially viable.
Per The Financial Times’ report from earlier this year, Merge was aiming to raise $250 million, and Altman is cofounding the company but not personally investing in it. Altman previously invested in Musk’s Neuralink.
Forest Neurotech’s approach to brain-computer interfaces may provide some clues into the direction Merge Labs will take. Whereas Neuralink and other companies’ interfaces measure electrical activity directly from neurons, Forest’s device interprets brain activity indirectly by using ultrasound to detect changes in blood flow. Active regions of the brain have more blood flow.
Miniaturized from a standard ultrasound machine, Forest’s device is also designed to provide stimulation with focused sound waves. Forest has been interested in using it to treat mental health disorders and brain injury, and the device is being trialed in an early safety study in the UK supported by the country’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency.
One hypothetical benefit of an ultrasound-based interface is its potential to provide whole-brain access. Implants like Neuralink’s can only measure electrical activity from the specific part of the brain they’re situated in. A device that could access the entire brain could enable more personalized neurological treatments and highly sophisticated assistive or augmentation capabilities.
An ultrasound interface would also not need to be implanted in the brain itself, though it would likely still require a “window” in the skull to access the brain. Bloomberg reported in August that Merge is considering combining an ultrasound device with gene therapy, ostensibly to make certain cells in the brain more responsive to sound waves.
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