Merge Labs is a brain-computer interface startup that Sam Altman co-founded in a personal capacity. On 15 January 2026 the company came out of stealth with a $252 million seed round, and according to TechCrunch the biggest cheque in it came from OpenAI. Media reports put the startup’s valuation at around $850 million. Merge wants to connect the brain to a computer without putting electrodes into brain tissue — using ultrasound and molecules instead — and the company itself says results should be measured in decades, not years. By September 2026 the company had its first technology partner: Butterfly Network, a maker of ultrasound chips.
Who invested, and how much
Besides OpenAI, the round includes Bain Capital, Interface Fund, Fifty Years and Valve founder Gabe Newell. OpenAI did not disclose how much it put in, and neither side has officially named the $850 million valuation: that figure was reported in the media, TechCrunch among them, citing sources.
Alongside Altman, the co-founders include Alex Blania and Sandro Herbig of Tools for Humanity (the World project), Tyson Aflalo and Sumner Norman, who founded the ultrasound neurotech company Forest Neurotech, and Caltech professor Mikhail Shapiro. OpenAI explains its interest simply: brain-computer interfaces will become a natural way to communicate with AI, and together with Merge it will develop scientific models.
How Merge wants to read the brain
The company itself words it carefully: its interfaces will be “much less invasive”, will connect with neurons “using molecules instead of electrodes”, and will transmit the signal using ultrasound, without implants in brain tissue. The company does not call the approach fully non-invasive. Media reports suggest this means the genetic “reporters” for ultrasound from Shapiro’s research, and therefore delivering genes into the brain, with the risks that brings. Merge has not confirmed this.
This is the opposite of Neuralink, whose surgical robot implants thread-like electrodes into the brain. In January 2026 Neuralink reported 21 participants in its clinical trials with no serious device-related complications. Merge calls itself a research lab, and according to Tom’s Hardware it has no working prototype yet. First it wants to help patients with brain injuries and diseases, then to expand human capabilities more broadly.
What happened next
In the eight months since, Merge has announced no new funding rounds, prototypes or scientific papers: the company blog still has just one post, from January. The first concrete news came on 1 September — a multi-year agreement with Butterfly Network. Merge gets Butterfly’s ultrasound chips, and Butterfly becomes its exclusive partner for that technology. The exclusivity runs one way, though: Butterfly itself is free to license the technology to other companies. Merge had talked about ultrasound before, but this is the first deal where money and hardware stand behind the words: licence fees, chip purchases and royalties on future sales.
Meanwhile, questions about Altman himself have mounted. On the very day of the announcement, TechCrunch wrote about a circular deal: OpenAI investing in its own CEO’s startup. In April the Wall Street Journal examined Altman’s private investments that overlap with OpenAI’s interests, and in May the US House Oversight Committee asked him for documents on conflicts of interest. Merge Labs, however, is not mentioned in that letter: the letter’s main example was the energy company Helion.
The bottom line
Merge Labs is a very expensive and very early bet: $252 million for a lab that measures its own path in decades. For OpenAI it is a way to stake an early claim on the interfaces that come after screens and voice; for the market, it is an alternative to Neuralink’s surgical route. The first results are a long way off, and the questions about where OpenAI’s interests end and Altman’s begin will only get louder.
For how AI is dividing the market and people, see the new digital divide.
