Tags: Caltech

Merge Labs, a brain‑computer interface startup co‑founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, is being spun out of the nonprofit Forest Neurotech. The new venture will focus on using ultrasound to read brain activity, a technique that differs from the electrical‑based approaches of rivals like Neuralink. Forest Neurotech’s leadership—including CEO Sumner Norman and chief scientific officer Tyson Aflalo—are among the co‑founders, along with Altman and other tech entrepreneurs. The company aims to create a non‑invasive, whole‑brain interface that could enable advanced neurological treatments and augmentation capabilities. Ler mais

The Laude Institute announced its inaugural Slingshots grant program, providing funding, compute power, and product support to 15 AI research projects focused on evaluation. The cohort includes initiatives such as the Terminal Bench coding benchmark, an updated ARC-AGI project, Formula Code from Caltech and UT Austin, and Columbia's BizBench. SWE‑Bench co‑founder John Boda Yang leads the new CodeClash competition framework. Recipients are expected to deliver tangible outcomes like startups or open‑source codebases, while the institute warns against benchmarks becoming overly company‑specific. Ler mais

Sam Altman is preparing to launch a brain‑computer interface startup, Merge Labs, alongside co‑founder Alex Blania. The company has recruited Caltech biomolecular engineer Mikhail Shapiro to its founding team and is expected to seek hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from OpenAI and other investors. Merge Labs aims to develop non‑invasive neural technologies that use ultrasound and gene‑editing techniques, positioning itself as a contrast to more invasive approaches such as Neuralink. Altman has publicly expressed a preference for read‑only, non‑surgical interfaces that could let users interact with AI systems like ChatGPT directly with thought. Ler mais