Sam Altman is preparing to co-found a new company funded by OpenAI that will go up against Elon Musk's Neuralink.

While OpenAI focuses on practical and responsible applications, Altman took a pointed jab at competitors such as Elon Musk’s Grok, which has released more risqué AI companions. He emphasized that OpenAI aims to develop useful tools without exploiting vulnerable users.

With OpenAI-backed startup Merge Labs poised to develop brain computer interface (BCI) technologies, leadership in the space is “far from settled”, an expert has said.

Sam Altman, the OpenAI co-founder valued at the center of artificial intelligence's rapid ascent, is preparing a challenge to Elon Musk in the high-stakes brain-computer interface market. Altman is co-founding a new venture,

The rollout was even messy enough to spill into betting markets. One 27-year-old day trader, Foster McCoy, pocketed $10,000 in just a few hours by wagering that Google’s Gemini would beat GPT-5 in a popularity contest.

S am Altman is in the process of co-founding a new brain-to-computer interface startup called Merge Labs, and raising funds for it with the capital possibly coming largely from OpenAI’s ventures team, unnamed sources told the Financial Times.