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

Merge Labs venture comes after OpenAI boss Sam Altman said the race to embed AI in humans is ‘going to get a lot weirder’

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.

OpenAI and co-founder Sam Altman are reportedly set to back a startup that would compete with Elon Musk’s Neuralink. According to a report by the Financial Times, the company in question is Merge Labs.

The new venture will go head-to-head with Elon Musk’s brain chip startup Neuralink. Altman is reportedly betting that AI can give his chips an edge over existing competitors. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo.