A startup backed by OpenAI and Sam Altman is betting its brain interface hardware on Butterfly Network’s chips. Merge Labs and the ultrasound company struck a multi-year licensing deal at the start of September covering brain-computer interfaces, with Merge building on Butterfly’s ultrasound-on-chip silicon rather than designing its own transducers.
Merge gains the Poseidon family of chips through Butterfly Embedded, the medtech company’s licensing arm. Butterfly becomes Merge’s exclusive chip-based ultrasound supplier, while Merge keeps the freedom to license its own interface technology elsewhere in the field. Payments flow upfront, at milestones and as hardware commitments, with royalties expected on later sales.
Merge Labs launched in January with $252M in seed funding from OpenAI, Bain Capital and others. The company is developing interfaces that talk to neurons with molecules rather than electrodes, and it sees ultrasound as a way to reach deeper brain regions. Its stated goal is restoring abilities lost to injury or disease.
The deal extends Butterfly’s push beyond bedside imaging. It previously worked with Forest Neurotech on a whole-brain ultrasound interface, and Midjourney Medical plans to fold the same chip technology into a full-body imaging system. For Merge, tapping a supplier with an approved scanner platform beats building transducer hardware from scratch.
