Just when you think circular offer Unable to get round again, OpenAI has invested in CEO Sam Altman’s brain computer interface startup Join Labs.
Join Labs, which describes itself as a “research lab” dedicated to “bridging biological and artificial intelligence to expand human capabilities,” came out of stealth on Thursday with an undisclosed seed round. A source familiar with the matter confirmed previous report that OpenAI wrote the largest single check in Merge Labs’ $250 million seed round at a value of $850 million.
“Individual experiences of the world arise from billions of active neurons,” says a statement from Merge Labs. “If we can interact with these neurons at scale, we can restore lost abilities, support healthier brain states, improve interactions with each other, and expand what we can imagine and create with advanced AI.”
Merge Labs says it intends to achieve this feat non-invasively by developing “a new technology that connects with neurons using molecules instead of electrodes” to “transit and receive information using deep modalities like ultrasound.”
The movement is deeper Altman’s competition with Elon Musk, The startup Neuralink is also developing a computer interface chip that allows people suffering from severe paralysis to control devices with their thoughts. Neuralink currently requires invasive surgery for implantation, in which a surgical robot removes a small piece of skull and inserts ultra-fine electrode threads into the brain to read neural signals. The last company raised a $650 million Series E in a Validate $9 billion in June 2025.
While there are medical use cases for BCI, Merge Labs seems more focused on using the technology to fulfill Silicon Valley’s fantasy of combining human biology with AI to give us superhuman abilities.
“Brain computer interface (BCI) is an important new frontier,” writes OpenAI in a post a blog. “They open up new ways to communicate, learn, and interact with technology. BCI will create a natural, human-centered way for anyone to seamlessly interact with AI. This is why OpenAI participated in Merge Labs’ seed round.”
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Aside from Altman, other co-founders include Alex Blania and Sandro Herbig, respectively CEO and product and engineering lead in Tools for Humanity, another Altman-supported company (and creator of eye-scanning World orbs); Tyson Aflalo and Sumner Norman, co-founders of implantable neurotechnology company Forest Neurotech; and Mikhail Shapiro, a researcher at Caltech.
As part of the deal, OpenAI will work with Merge Labs on basic scientific models and other frontier tools to “accelerate progress.” In a blog post, OpenAI notes that AI will not only help accelerate R&D in bioengineering, neuroscience, and device engineering, but the interface will also benefit from an AI operating system that “can interpret intent, adapt to individuals, and be reliable with limited and noisy signals.”
In other words, Merge Labs can be a remote control for OpenAI software. That leads to the circular nature of the deal: if Merge Labs succeeds, it can lead more users to OpenAI, which in turn justifies the OpenAI investment to the company. It also increases the value of the start to have Altman use the resources of the company he runs.
OpenAI is also working on it Jony Ive’s first iowhich acquired last year, to produce a piece of AI hardware that does not depend on the screen. latest an unconfirmed leak suggesting the device could be an earbud.
OpenAI primarily invests through the OpenAI Startup Fund, which has invested in several other startups connected to Altman, including Red Queen Bio, Rain AI, and Harvey. OpenAI has also entered into commercial agreements with startups Altman owns or chairs, including nuclear fusion startup Helion Energy and nuclear fission company Oklo.
Altman has been dreaming about the so-called “Merger” – the idea that humans and machines will merge – at least in 2017 when he published a post a blog predicts it will happen somewhere between 2025 and 2075. He also speculates that the merger could take many forms, including plugging electrons into our brains or becoming “chatbots’ very close friends.”
He says fusion is the “best-case scenario” for humans to survive against AI superintelligence, which he describes as a separate species in conflict with humans.
“Even if the merger has started, it’s only going to get weirder,” Altman wrote. “We will be the first species to design our own offspring. My guess is that we can be the biological bootloader for digital intelligence and then branch off the evolutionary tree, or we can figure out what a successful fusion looks like.”
TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI and Merge Labs for more information.