The relationships between these two technological figures are already tense. And the rivalry between Sam Altman and Elon Musk should not improve. According to Financial Times, the OpenNAi co -founder will support the creation of a new company that will be a direct competitor of Neuralink … the company founded by the Chief of Tesla.
In detail, Sam Altman would help raise funds for this new company, called Merge Labs, whose capital will largely come from the OpenAi risk capital team, according to three anonymous sources. On the other hand, I would not play a daily role in this project. Operai did not comment on this information.
Neuralink, sector leader
Merge Labs specializes in brain computers interfaces … which is also the case of Neuralink. His name comes from the word “fusion” (“fusion”, an editor’s note), an expression that is often used in Silicon Valley to evoke the moment when humans and machines will be one.
Sam Altman had already written a long blog article on the subject in 2017, believing that this moment could arrive in 2025. This year, he suggested in another blog article that we could soon have “high -speed brain interfaces” thanks to the recent technological advances.
In 2016, Elon Musk founded his commercial implant company. Since then, Neuralink has been running in mind in this area. At the moment, the company is in the clinical trial phase with people with severe paralysis. Elon Musk’s long -term objective? Allow patients to control devices through thought. Three people have already been able to benefit from the Neuralink brain implant.
And the capabilities of the chips impressed the observers. In February 2024, the first human implanted with Neuralink managed to move a computer mouse simply through thought. A month later, he managed to play chess, Mario Kart and Civilization 6 Thanks to the implant. For his part, the second patient had fun playing the famous shooting game Counter-Strike 2. Results that helped the initiative to raise $ 600 million last June, improving at $ 9 billion.
An ancient rivalry
For its part, Merge Labs hopes to raise $ 250 million, to reach an assessment of $ 850 million, far from Neuralink figures, therefore. But Elon Musk should not see very good eye the arrival of this new competitor in this market. Especially because the relationships between the two patterns have deteriorated largely. If the couple agreed in Openai in 2015, the two billionaires have become rivals since the departure of Elon Musk of the company in 2018.
According to the head of X, Sam Altman has manipulated him to invest millions of dollars in OpenAI, and has betrayed the objective of the non -profit organization, according to a complaint filed last August against the company. Since then, Elon Musk has launched its own AI company, called XAI. Since then, the two men have multiplied attacks and peaks by means or social networks.
The last example until yesterday, when Elon Musk said that he was going to initiate legal procedures against Apple, accusing the company of participating in anti -competent practices by promoting the OpenAi chatbot to the detriment of others, including yours.
Source: BFM TV
