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

Sam Altman, the OpenAI co-founder valued at the center of artificial intelligence's rapid ascent, is preparing a challenge to Elon Musk in the high-stakes brain-computer interface market. Altman is co-founding a new venture,

Neuralink is a dominant force in the BCI space, but the arrival of a new, well-capitalised startup in Merge Labs may change the conversation.

While OpenAI focuses on practical and responsible applications, Altman took a pointed jab at competitors such as Elon Musk’s Grok, which has released more risqué AI companions. He emphasized that OpenAI aims to develop useful tools without exploiting vulnerable users.

The rollout was even messy enough to spill into betting markets. One 27-year-old day trader, Foster McCoy, pocketed $10,000 in just a few hours by wagering that Google’s Gemini would beat GPT-5 in a popularity contest.

OpenAI and co-founder Sam Altman are reportedly set to back a startup that would compete with Elon Musk’s Neuralink. According to a report by the Financial Times, the company in question is Merge Labs.