Sam Altman is plotting his next move against Elon Musk, with plans for a Neuralink competitor.
OpenAI is planning to invest in a brain implant startup, the Financial Times reported Tuesday.
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The new company, called Merge Labs, aims to merge humans and machines together through artificial intelligence and is raising funds at a $850 million valuation, according to FT.
The startup reportedly is aiming to raise $250 million in total investment and OpenAI’s ventures team is expected to supply much of the new capital.
Sources told the publication that Altman will cofound the company alongside Alex Blania, the cofounder and CEO of World, another OpenAI-backed startup that uses eyeball-scanning technology to provide an anonymous digital identification. However, Altman will not personally invest in Merge Labs.
The company would be a direct competitor to Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which also aims to connect computers and human brains through its brain chip implants.
Last month, Musk told investors that he plans to implant 20,000 people a year with Neuralink chips by 2031. If successful, those implants will generate an estimated $1 billion in annual revenue for the company, Bloomberg reported.
The two billionaire entrepreneurs, who founded OpenAI together, have been going head-to-head in the race to dominate the AI market. Musk left OpenAI in 2018 and went on to launch his own AI startup called xAI in 2023. Earlier this year, he sued OpenAI to block the company's transition from non-profit to a for-profit.
On Monday, Musk claimed that Apple $AAPL is violating antitrust laws by maintaining OpenAI as the top AI app on the App Store. “xAI will take immediate legal action,” he wrote in a post on X $TWTR. Altman replied to his post on X claiming that Musk manipulates X to “benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn't like."