OpenAI has signaled its intentions to become a major player in brain computer interfaces (BCIs). The scale of the firm’s first round of investment in Merge Labs, as it emerges from stealth mode, places it among the most heavily funded BCI efforts in the U.S., second only to Neuralink.
That’s because Merge Labs, co-founded by Altman, will be going forward with $252 million in its tech advancement war chest, reports Bloomberg. However, it admits there's a long road ahead.
OpenAI wasn’t the only contributor in this investment round, but it was the biggest. Another notable investor was Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, which owns the gaming storefront Steam. Newell’s hat is already in this ring with his own brain tech company, Starfish Neuroscience.
The limited amount of Merge Labs' currently public materials confirms that the fledgling BCI outfit will be developing fundamentally new approaches to this technology.
“We believe this requires increasing the bandwidth and brain coverage of BCIs by several orders of magnitude while making them much less invasive,” explains a blog penned by the freshly uncloaked firm. “To make this happen, we’re developing entirely new technologies that connect with neurons using molecules instead of electrodes, transmit and receive information using deep-reaching modalities like ultrasound, and avoid implants into brain tissue.”
No to invasive implants, yes to AI operating systems
Merge Labs also claims that the most recent breakthroughs in biotechnology, hardware, neuroscience, and computing will be adopted. The resulting BCIs, according to the company, will be “equal parts biology, device, and AI,” mixed into an accessible form factor.
So, in brief, Merge Labs BCIs will contrast with Neuralink’s approach because they will avoid implants into brain tissue. The key will be whether the firm’s technology can achieve workable results from “AI operating systems that can interpret intent, adapt to individuals, and operate reliably with limited and noisy signals.”
Distant horizons
The $252 million investment in Merge Labs sounds like quite a gamble, as Bloomberg’s report suggests the money will effectively establish a research lab to fix the disadvantages of the non-invasive BCI route. In other words, the money raised appears to be for a pre-prototype outfit, not a product-ready company. Meanwhile, Neuralink is pretty deep into testing its BCIs with humans, as are various Chinese competitors.
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