Merge Labs has officially launched, with a scale and configuration that is unusual even by recent neurotech standards. The company emerges with a roughly $250 million seed round, participation from Sam Altman and OpenAI, and an experienced founding group that spans academia, nonprofit research, and frontier-technology. Alongside the capital and hires, Merge is positioning itself around a brain-computer interface approach centered on ultrasound and biological interactions, framed as an alternative to electrode-based systems that avoids intracortical implants.

Public information about Merge remains limited to high-level statements. The company has not outlined specific product targets, clinical indications, or deployment timelines, and its public materials focus on mission and approach rather than sharing detailed technical plans. What has become clear is the structure of the effort itself, rooted in Forest Neurotech’s ultrasound work and framed around long-horizon, non-invasive neurotechnology interfacing with industry-leading AI infrastructure.

Merge Labs’ Mission

Merge Labs traces its origins to Forest Neurotech, a nonprofit research effort created to address foundational constraints in ultrasound-based neural interfaces. Forest emerged from the Convergent Research ecosystem, which focuses on assembling teams to work through technical bottlenecks, upstream of commercial viability. From the outset, Forest centred on ultrasound imaging and stimulation as a way to expand neural access beyond electrode-based approaches.

The transition from Forest to Merge Labs is described as a spin-out. The two entities share founders, while Forest continues to operate as a nonprofit research organisation. What has not been clarified publicly is how responsibilities, intellectual property, and personnel are divided between them, including whether Forest remains the primary research vehicle for clinical translation and early human studies.

In its own materials, Merge articulates a long-term mission of building brain-computer interfaces that bridge biological and artificial intelligence. The company frames this around increasing bandwidth and brain coverage while reducing invasiveness, aiming to create interfaces that are safe, accessible, and ultimately suitable for widespread use, beyond clinical use cases.

That framing places Merge within the practical limits of ultrasound as a modality. Ultrasound can reach deep brain structures, but spatial precision, skull-induced distortion, and safety constraints have historically confined its use to tightly controlled applications. As a result, progress in the field has tended to move incrementally, from constrained and well-characterised use cases toward broader biological interactions, rather than directly toward general-purpose neural interfaces.

Recent developments in focused ultrasound reflect this trajectory. INSIGHTEC, after more than a decade deploying high-intensity focused ultrasound for functional neurosurgery, recently spun out Lotus Neuro to pursue lower-intensity applications such as blood-brain barrier opening for drug delivery. That shift treats ultrasound as enabling infrastructure for biological and therapeutic interaction. Merge Labs enters from the opposite direction: using that same lower-intensity regime as the foundation for building an interface layer.

People, Roles, and Governance

Merge Labs brings together a founding group that spans academia, nonprofit research, and technology operations. The scientific direction is anchored by Mikhail Shapiro, who holds a strong background in bioengineering and neural interface research. He is joined by Tyson Aflalo and Sumner Norman, both involved in Forest Neurotech’s development and its work on ultrasound-based technologies.

On the operational side, Merge has recruited Alex Blania and Sandro Herbig, whose experience lies in building and scaling infrastructure-heavy technology through Tools for Humanity. Sam Altman is also named as a co-founder in a personal capacity.

Several of these hires sit alongside continuing commitments elsewhere. Blania and Herbig are reported to remain in their leadership positions at Tools for Humanity, while Shapiro will continue his role at the California Institute of Technology. While Merge has not formally announced a laboratory or headquarters location, current job postings are concentrated in the San Francisco Bay Area, suggesting that early operations are being built there.

Merge Labs’ current openings focus on senior technical and research roles, with positions spanning engineering, neuroscience, and applied research, rather than commercial or go-to-market functions. The early emphasis is on building internal capability around the core technical thesis before defining downstream applications or products.

The involvement of OpenAI adds another layer of governance complexity. OpenAI is both an investor and a collaborator, while Sam Altman’s role is framed explicitly as personal rather than institutional. This configuration creates a dynamic that places a premium on transparency, especially given OpenAI’s scale, influence, and growing public scrutiny. So far, Merge has not yet detailed how oversight and independence are structured.

Capital and Positioning

Merge Labs launched alongside a seed round reported around $250 million, with coverage placing the company’s valuation at roughly $850 million. Named investors include OpenAI, Bain Capital, Interface Fund, Fifty Years, and Gabe Newell, with OpenAI reportedly contributing the largest check. At that scale, the round resembles late-stage financing in neurotechnology, despite Merge being newly formed and defined primarily by mission, structure, and founding team rather than disclosed products or clinical approaches.

That capitalisation stands out in the context of recent BCI funding. Over the past two years, large rounds have concentrated in invasive platforms such as Neuralink, Synchron, Precision Neuroscience, Paradromics, Blackrock Neurotech, and Science Corp, where funding has scaled hand-in-hand with increases in human data, defined surgical approaches, and advancing regulatory timelines. In those cases, capital has thus been underwriting execution.

Merge departs from the dominant funding pattern in BCIs, with one important precedent. Neuralink also attracted substantial capital early, but did so around a clearly specified implant and surgical robotics platform, with its first disclosed raise in 2017 targeting roughly $100 million and later rounds tied to an increasingly defined technical and clinical path.

By contrast, Merge’s financing commits comparable-scale capital to a non-implant, experimental ultrasound-based approach at a point where the modality itself remains the primary uncertainty.