Altman taps leading researcher for BCI startup Merge Labs
The hire suggests that Merge is taking a much less invasive approach than Elon Musk’s Neuralink. Also: Sources IRL and reactions to yesterday's Snap scoop.
Sam Altman has tapped Mikhail Shapiro, an award-winning biomolecular engineer, to join the Merge Labs brain-computer interface startup he’s set to announce soon with co-founder Alex Blania.
While Shapiro’s official title is unclear, sources say he will be part of Merge’s founding team and has been positioned as a key leader in talks with investors. Those talks are ongoing, but Merge expects to raise hundreds of millions of dollars from OpenAI and others, as The Financial Times earlier reported.
Shapiro’s hiring signals a lot about the technical direction Altman is taking with Merge. His engineering lab at Caltech has pioneered several advances in biomolecular tech, with a special focus on noninvasive techniques for neural imaging and control. He has particularly focused on using ultrasound to interact with the human brain without the need for open-skull surgery like Neuralink requires.
He has also done extensive work with gene therapy to make cells visible to ultrasound, which backs up an earlier Bloomberg report that Merge is eyeing that approach for its first product. Neither Shapiro nor a spokesperson for Altman and Blania could be reached for comment.
During a recent talk, Shapiro explained how sound waves and magnetic fields can be used to create a brain-computer interface. Rather than stick electrodes into brain tissue, he said it’s “easier to introduce genes into cells” that modify them to respond to ultrasound. His stated mission is “to develop ways to interface with neurons in the brain and cells elsewhere in the body that would be less invasive.”
Altman has also said that he doesn’t like Neuralink’s invasive approach. At a press dinner in August that I attended, he said he “would definitely not sow something to my brain” that would kill neurons like Neuralink’s interface does. “I would like to be able to think something and have ChatGPT respond to it,” he said. “Maybe I want read-only. That seems like a reasonable thing.”
When Merge Labs is announced in the coming weeks, I’d expect Altman to be chairman but not play a day-to-day role, as he already does with co-founder Blania at their eyeball-scanning orb startup called Tools for Humanity.
The announcement's imminent timing is apt, given Altman’s past prediction about the field of BCI. ”A popular topic in Silicon Valley is talking about what year humans and machines will merge (or, if not, what year humans will get surpassed by rapidly improving AI or a genetically enhanced species),” Altman wrote in 2017. “Most guesses seem to be between 2025 and 2075.”
Reactions to yesterday’s Snap scoop
Snap is down more than 1% this morning following news that the company is attempting to raise $1 billion for its AR glasses unit in what someone told Sources.news was an “existential” fundraise.
It’s not hard to imagine the urgency CEO Evan Spiegel must feel. The L.A. company made a big bet on augmented reality glasses way back in 2016; today it’s working on its sixth generation—while drafting behind perpetual rival Meta as that company’s twist on Ray-Bans consume a majority share in the category.
I know The Social Reckoning is already in production, but a plea to Aaron Sorkin: Can we get a flick for this unending rivalry? Call it Social Anxiety.
Three things to consider: (1) Snap has indicated there will be significant launch costs tied to Spectacles’ consumer launch in 2026 – unclear if we get color on that in Q3 earnings or we have to wait until Q4 ’25 earnings. (2) While $1 billion is a first step, it pales in comparison to the capital being spent by Snap’s larger peers (such Meta/Google). (3) While it will be great to better understand the cost side of Snap’s businesses, none of this solves for the company’s larger challenge, which is driving content time spent to meaningfully accelerate revenue growth.
ICYMI: Google’s head of Android this week on ACCESS
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Ellis and I are excited to record the first ACCESS live taping at the Google Ventures AI Builders event in San Francisco on November 10th. Our guest will be Guillermo Rauch, founder and CEO of Vercel. If you’ll be in town, work in AI, and want to attend, drop me a line.
Sources IRL
It was fun chatting with my friends Cory Weinberg (The Information) and Ben Bergmen (Business Insider) about the state of tech media during LA Tech Week. Thanks to Jessica Schaefer and Capital V Strategies for having us.
Shoutout to Brunswick for having me talk about Sources and going independent this week at their event for tech comms leaders in San Francisco. If you’re throwing an event where I can help and get the word out about what I’m building, please get in touch.
I’m excited to be throwing the NYC launch party for Sources with Human Ventures on Monday, November 3rd! There will be great people from across tech and media, plus really good tequila, music, and food. If you’ll be in town and want to attend (and are interested in playing poker), let me know ASAP.
I guess I’m “post legacy media” now
Shout-out to the
crew for this hilarious overview of the media landscape on today’s show with .