Merge Labs
Merge Labs is a Non-Invasive Neuroimaging company founded in 2025 and based in San Francisco, United States. It has raised $250M in total funding, most recently a Seed in 2026 at a $850M valuation.
Merge Labs is a Public Benefit Corporation co-founded in 2025 by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania, with a stated mission of bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability, agency, and experience. Rather than Neuralink-style surgical implants, the company is pursuing entirely new modalities that connect with neurons using molecules instead of electrodes, transmitting and receiving information through deep-reaching, non-invasive techniques such as ultrasound, with the goal of increasing BCI bandwidth and brain coverage by several orders of magnitude while making the interface far less invasive. In January 2026 the company emerged from stealth alongside a $250 million seed round led by OpenAI at an $850 million valuation. The founding team pairs entrepreneurs Blania and Sandro Herbig (both from Tools for Humanity / World) with neurotech researchers Mikhail Shapiro (Caltech), Tyson Aflalo, and Sumner Norman (both co-founders of Forest Neurotech). Altman is a co-founder but is not involved in day-to-day operations; Blania leads management.
One of the most heavily capitalized new entrants in the field and the clearest well-funded challenger to Neuralink, betting that a non-invasive molecular-plus-ultrasound stack can deliver high-bandwidth brain-AI integration without surgery — backed by OpenAI's largest single venture check and a founding bench drawn from Caltech and Forest Neurotech.
merge.io ↗·Non-Invasive Neuroimaging·
United States·private 
