Sam Altman’s Merge Labs Raises $250M With Backing From OpenAI
OpenAI has invested in Merge Labs, a brain-computer interface startup founded by CEO Sam Altman, as part of a $250 million seed round valuing the company at $850 million.
Transfer learning is a machine learning technique where knowledge gained from training a model on one task is reused to improve performance on a related task. Instead of starting from scratch, a pre-trained model is adapted with new data, saving time, computational resources, and the need for massive datasets. This approach is especially effective in areas like image recognition, natural language processing, and speech analysis, where foundational models can be fine-tuned for specialized purposes. By leveraging previously learned patterns, transfer learning allows AI systems to achieve high accuracy even with limited data. It plays a crucial role in modern AI development, enabling faster innovation and broader accessibility to advanced model capabilities.
OpenAI has invested in Merge Labs, a brain-computer interface startup founded by CEO Sam Altman, as part of a $250 million seed round valuing the company at $850 million.
Apple introduced Apple Creator Studio, a subscription bundle combining professional creative apps with new AI-driven features across video, music, imaging, and productivity tools. The offering expands Apple’s push into intelligent software workflows for creators.
Google released a major upgrade to its Gemini Deep Research agent, giving developers access to advanced autonomous research capabilities through the Interactions API. The company also introduced DeepSearchQA, a benchmark for evaluating multi-step web research agents.
Google introduced the Titans architecture and the MIRAS framework to enable AI models to handle massive contexts and update their internal memory while running, improving performance in long-sequence tasks.
ChatGPT now reaches more than 800 million weekly users, creating a powerful adoption flywheel that is speeding the transition from AI experimentation to full-scale enterprise deployment, according to OpenAI’s new 2025 report.
OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever says the era of scaling compute and data as the main driver of AI progress is ending, arguing that meaningful advances now depend on true scientific breakthroughs and solving AI’s poor generalization.
Voice AI startup Wispr has secured another $25M in funding as its Flow dictation app surges in enterprise adoption and user retention, bringing total capital raised to $81M.
Google has released Gemini 3, its most powerful AI model yet, offering advanced multimodal reasoning, coding capabilities, and agentic planning tools across multiple platforms.
xAI has launched Grok 4.1, a major model upgrade designed to deliver more creative, emotionally aware, and coherent interactions, with new Thinking and Non-Thinking variants now live across all xAI platforms.
British-Polish startup ElevenLabs found one of its top AI researchers working in a call center – a result of its decision to abandon traditional hiring platforms like LinkedIn.