Today we are launching Merge Labs, a frontier research lab with the long-term goal to develop safe, affordable, high bandwidth brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) that can benefit all of humanity. 

We believe a sufficiently advanced BCI will improve lives and maximize human agency. It can restore lost abilities, help us understand brain function and dysfunction, increase our capacity to connect with each other, and greatly expand human potential by allowing us to directly experience and harness the growing capabilities of artificial intelligence. In the context of exponentially accelerating AI, we view advanced BCI as one of the most important and urgent technological goals for humanity.

We are inspired by, and have contributed to, pioneering BCI efforts based on both invasive brain probes and noninvasive low-resolution techniques. However, we think for BCI to reach its full potential we need a radically new approach that can (1) drastically increase bandwidth, and (2) provide a less invasive form factor that will ultimately be safe and affordable enough for anyone to use. Recent breakthroughs in biotechnology, hardware, computational neuroscience and AI give us strong conviction that building this next-generation BCI is possible. This technology will interface with neurons at the molecular level and transmit and receive information without needing to stick any devices into brain tissue.

The ambition of this project will demand we think in terms of decades, not years, and solve some very hard problems. We embrace this because we believe the benefits to humanity will massively outweigh the difficulties of getting there.

Merge Lab is not a conventional startup. We’re starting out as a research lab that will be home to the smartest, most motivated people building the future of BCI. To achieve our goal, we will innovate and integrate molecules, devices, neuroscience and AI and collaborate with the best companies and labs in the world. Along the way, we will share our progress and tools with the neuroscience and clinical communities to enable discoveries about brain function. And ultimately, we will turn our technology into products that help patients and serve humanity.

Alongside fundamental advances in BCI technology, we’re developing approaches to ensure that future users of advanced BCI  will have agency, privacy and security, and that BCI technology will ultimately be accessible to anyone who can benefit from its abilities.

Our founding team reflects the multidisciplinary nature of our vision. We are bioengineers,  neuroscientists, physicists, computer scientists and entrepreneurs who have built hyper-ambitious technologies for humanity at Caltech, OpenAI, Forest Neurotech, Tools for Humanity and World. We have equally ambitious backers committed to our long-term goal. All of us share the dream of accessible advanced BCI that enhances human agency and are excited to do the work to bring it into existence.