The new venture will go head-to-head with Elon Musk’s brain chip startup Neuralink. Altman is reportedly betting that AI can give his chips an edge over existing competitors. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Gizmodo.

Sam Altman is preparing to co-found a new company funded by OpenAI that will go up against Elon Musk's Neuralink.

Sam Altman is in the process of co-founding a new brain-to-computer interface startup called Merge Labs, and raising funds for it with the capital expected to largely come from OpenAI’s ventures team, unnamed sources told the Financial Times.