OpenAI Invests in the Startup Merge Labs for Creating Implants

• OpenAI invests $250 million in Merge Labs.
• Merge Labs competes with Neuralink in the development of implants.
• Sam Altman wrote about the merging of humans and machines in 2017.

OpenAI plans to invest in the new startup Merge Labs, which develops implants for merging humans with artificial intelligence. This competition with Neuralink, the company founded by Elon Musk, focuses on chips for the brain that allow users to control computers with their thoughts.

According to information from Financial Times, OpenAI intends to raise funding in the amount of $250 million for Merge Labs, which is valued at $850 million.

Neuralink recently raised $600 million at a valuation of $9 billion and has already begun clinical trials of its technology on patients with quadriplegia. Musk aims to implant millions of Neuralink devices in human brains over the next decade to enable people to interface with artificial intelligence through body and brain modifications.

The name of the startup Merge Labs is likely linked to a publication by OpenAI collaborator Sam Altman in 2017 about the merging of humans and machines. Altman noted that this merging has already begun and could occur in the coming years.

Altman and Musk have become superstars in the development of artificial intelligence, especially after Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and founded his own company xAI in 2023, which released the chatbot Grok to compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Musk commented on the news about Merge Labs, using a smiley with closed eyes. The Independent reached out to OpenAI for comment.

Tags: Technology/AI