The US company OpenAI will participate in the seed funding round of Merge Labs, a new brain-computer Interface (BCI) research lab co-founded by OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman and several neurotechnology researchers.
The financing totals about $250 million and values Merge Labs at roughly $850 million, Bloomberg and TechCrunch reported, though OpenAI did not disclose financial terms in its post.
In its announcement, OpenAI described BCIs as “an important new frontier” that could give people “a more direct way to express intent,” and said it will collaborate with Merge Labs on “scientific foundation models and other frontier tools” to accelerate bioengineering, neuroscience and device engineering work.
The investment follows OpenAI’s recent acquisition of health data startup Torch.
What Merge Labs is building
Merge Labs, in its own launch post, said it is pursuing “fundamentally new approaches” that aim to raise bandwidth and brain coverage while making BCIs “much less invasive,” including systems that “connect with neurons using molecules instead of electrodes,” use “deep-reaching modalities like ultrasound,” and “avoid implants into brain tissue.”
BCI market backdrop
The announcement comes in a BCI market where the most advanced clinical efforts remain implant-led. Neuralink remains the most visible clinical-stage benchmark in the sector. Neuralink had raised $650 million in a Series E round in June 2025. Semafor reported the financing valued Neuralink at about $9 billion, citing people familiar with the round.
Neuralink also said in May 2025 it received an FDA Breakthrough Device Designation for a speech-restoration device, a designation intended to help accelerate development and review for certain medical devices. In parallel, Synchron has pursued a less invasive implant path that avoids open brain surgery, and has said its Stentrode system received FDA breakthrough device designation.
Enterprise lens
For enterprise leaders, the move points to longer-horizon investment in new interface layers: AI companies are now putting balance-sheet capital behind new “input/output” layers that could sit alongside screens, voice, and wearables.
OpenAI’s post explicitly links higher-bandwidth interfaces and AI systems interpreting intent under noisy signals, tying the work to signal decoding, personalization, and reliability.
Policy and what’s next
Regulatory and trust considerations are also relevant, particularly for implanted BCIs. The FDA has a dedicated guidance for implanted BCI devices for patients with paralysis or amputation, reflecting a pathway for clinical-grade systems even as the field evolves.
Separately, governments and watchdog bodies have been warning that “brain signal” data introduces distinct privacy and security risks. The 2024 U.S. GAO report highlights risks around protection of brain data and related information generated by BCI use.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis signed HB24-1058 in April 2024, amending the Colorado Privacy Act to classify “neural data” as sensitive data and extend privacy protections to information generated by neurotechnology.
Merge Labs has not published a timeline for clinical trials or regulatory submissions in its launch note, describing itself as a research lab that plans to “think in decades rather than years.” The announcements center on funding and research collaboration.
OpenAI is willing to fund foundational neurotech R&D and pair it with frontier AI tooling, while Neuralink and Synchron are pursuing clinical development pathways for implanted systems.