"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."
Sam Altman recruited Mikhail Shapiro to join Merge Labs, positioning Shapiro as a founding team leader during investor talks. Merge anticipates raising hundreds of millions of dollars from OpenAI and other investors. Shapiro's Caltech lab has advanced biomolecular technologies, emphasizing noninvasive neural imaging and control methods. Shapiro has pursued ultrasound-based interactions with the human brain that avoid open-skull surgery. Shapiro's work also includes gene therapy approaches to make cells visible to ultrasound. The hiring indicates a technical direction toward less invasive brain-computer interface techniques compared with surgical implant approaches.
#brain-computer-interface #noninvasive-neural-imaging #ultrasound-neuromodulation #mikhail-shapiro #merge-labs
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