“Corporate needs you to find the difference between these two brain chips… They’re the same picture.”

At this point, he’s gotta be doing it just to piss Elon off. Sam Altman and OpenAI (who are currently sitting on more sugar daddy money than they know what to do with) are gearing up to back a company that’s pretty much a copy-and-paste of Elon’s Neuralink. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but try telling that to Musk this morning. Earlier this week he was already on a tear, accusing “Tim Apple” of giving OpenAI special treatment in App Store rankings. Now Sam’s basically on a megaphone going, “Hey, Elon, I like your brain chip idea… I’m making one too.”

The brain baby in question is called Merge Labs… and if you haven’t heard of it, that’s because it’s still in stealth mode (read: they’re not ready for a 48-hour Reddit roast session with memes of their founders photoshopped onto Theranos merch). They’re trying to bag $250 million, mostly from OpenAI’s venture arm…aka Sam Altman’s bottomless “hold my beer while I yeet a quarter-billion into the void” account. And the valuation is peanuts (at least for Sam) just a breezy $850 million. Which in 2025, seems like the going rate for a cool logo, domain name, and a half-written press release.

And get this, Sam’s tag-teaming this one with Alex Blania… yes, the eyeball-scan guy from Worldcoin, aka that crypto project where you let a chrome bowling ball stare deep into your soul for some internet tokens (sure, why not). Altman’s not running it day-to-day or putting in his own money (the beach house mortgage isn’t gonna pay itself), but make no mistake… this thing’s got his fingerprints all over it. And by fingerprints, I mean the same self-important blog post energy that gave us The Merge 8 years ago.

Sam’s been horny for this idea since before TikTok controlled every teenager’s thoughts. Back in 2017, he wrote about “The Merge” (the eventual blending of human brains and machines) and guessed it could start happening by 2025. Now, thanks to advances in AI and neural tech, he’s apparently decided, “Screw it, let’s do this now.”

On the other hand, while Sam’s been out here LARPing as a prophet in Medium posts, Musk’s $9 billion brain-chip baby has already been literally in people’s heads. One ALS patient can now move a cursor and edit videos just by thinking about it (insane isn’t it?). And Elon’s endgame is to jam 20,000 of these bad boys into skulls every year by 2031 and hoover up a clean $1 billion annually. He’s not exactly starting from scratch either… Neuralink’s already banked $650 million and stacked a backer list full of Silicon Valley household names, with Sequoia and Thrive Capital right at the top.

(Source: Mississippi Free Press)

I guess you could argue Altman’s Merge Labs is stepping into a boxing match with someone who’s been practicing his uppercuts for nearly a decade. But Altman’s got an edge… OpenAI’s valued at $300 billion, which means he can swipe the company Amex for anything and everything he needs to close Elon’s head start (brain drills? sure. a Super Bowl ad for a brain chip? why not). And if I had to bet on what’s next? Elon will probably sue Altman for this too… and do it before the week’s over, just to keep his name trending on X.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Apple as mentioned in the article.