Sam Altman’s new brain venture, Merge Labs, will emerge from a non-profit

CEO of OpenAI Sam AltmanNew Brain-computer interface The startup Merge Labs is being spun out of 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, Forest Neurotech CEO Sumner Norman and chief scientific officer Tyson Aflalo are among the founders of Merge Labs, which remains in stealth mode, WIRED has learned.

Although some details of Merge have been previously reported, this is the first time the company has been linked to Forest Neurotech.

According to the Financial Times, Alex Plania, CEO of World – an Altman-backed digital identity company that makes… Orb to clear the eye– He is also among the founders. Earlier this year, the Financial Times was the first to report on this a report About the existence of Merge Labs and that it was raising money worth $850 million.

The name Merge Labs refers to the Silicon Valley concept of “merging,” the point at which humans merge with machines. Altman wrote about the idea in A Blog 2017where he cited predictions that the merger could happen as early as 2025 and offered his own theory that the merger has already begun.

Forest Neurotech, a focused research organization, has been developing an ultrasound-based brain-computer interface for the past few years. The nonprofit was launched in 2023 from philanthropic incubator Convergent Research, which is partly funded by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, his wife Wendy Schmidt, and billionaire hedge fund manager Ken Griffin.

Forest & Convergent declined to comment.

Michael Shapiro, researcher at Caltech and The Verge I mentionedtapped for Merge Labs, and is currently a consultant for Forest Neurotech. Norman, who earned his PhD in neural engineering at Caltech, worked closely with Shapiro during his postdoctoral work. Afallo, according to LinkedIn, was previously executive director at Caltech’s T&C Chen Brain-Machine Interface Center.

Merge will join Elon Musk nervous And a growing number of other startups are developing brain-computer interfaces, devices that collect brain data and turn it into useful outputs. Academic researchers have been experimenting with these devices for decades, but recent advances in artificial intelligence and devices used to record brain signals have made the technology more commercially viable.

According to the Financial Times a report Since earlier this year, Merge has been aiming to raise $250 million, and Altman co-founded the company but has not personally invested in it. Altman previously invested in Musk’s company Neuralink.