Scale & Strategy
This is Scale & Strategy, your business compass (we're here to guide you in the right direction).
Here’s what we got for you today:
- The Brain Chip Beef You Didn’t Know You Needed
- Microsoft’s Copilot Just Got the GPT-5 Glow-Up
The Brain Chip Beef You Didn’t Know You Needed
Sam Altman is reportedly cooking up a new brain-computer interface startup called Merge Labs, eyeing a valuation near $850M.
Funding might come from OpenAI’s ventures arm, though nothing’s signed yet. He’s rumored to be teaming up with Alex Blania, CEO of Tools for Humanity (aka the folks behind the eyeball-scanning “are you human?” orbs).
The play? A direct rival to Elon Musk’s Neuralink, which is already valued at $9B and running human trials to help people with paralysis control devices with just their thoughts.
Both outfits are dabbling in the big, messy idea of the singularity—the moment where humans and machines blur into one.
Quick hits:
- Merge Labs: ~$850M potential valuation, early talks with OpenAI Ventures.
- Co-founder: Alex Blania of Tools for Humanity.
- Neuralink: $9B valuation, $600M raised in June, human trials underway.
The pettiest chip.
Altman has mused about a future where we design our own descendants. Musk, of course, has his own AI-will-overtake-humans prophecy.
Add in their long history of public beef (most recently dragging each other on X), and the “brain chip wars” are shaping up less like high science and more like tech’s version of Love Island.
Microsoft’s Copilot Just Got the GPT-5 Glow-Up
Microsoft quietly flipped the switch: GPT-5 is now baked into Copilot everywhere—from Microsoft 365 and the standalone Copilot app to GitHub Copilot and Azure AI Foundry.
What’s new:
- Smart Mode: Copilot now swaps between quick-fire answers and deep-dive analysis on its own—no toggling needed.
- Workflow brain: GPT-5’s bigger context window lets it read not just your prompt, but your email chains, doc history, and the task you’re actually trying to finish.
- Nuance on lock: It can catch tone shifts, implied meaning, and pull in related context across apps for replies that feel less robotic and more “actually useful.”
- Open to all: Unlike past upgrades, GPT-5 isn’t locked behind enterprise paywalls. Even casual Copilot users get the top-shelf model.
Why it matters:
This is Copilot’s power play against ChatGPT. Instead of just reacting to inputs, GPT-5 inside Copilot can track context, cross apps, and take actions—basically moving from passive chatbot to active co-worker.
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