Why does Merge Labs build on ultrasound when implanted electrodes already work? · Grey Matter

Implanted electrodes hear a few thousand neurons in a patch of cortex a few millimetres across, and each new patch costs another operation.

Why does Merge Labs build on ultrasound when implanted electrodes already work?

Implanted electrodes hear a few thousand neurons in a patch of cortex a few millimetres across, and each new patch costs another operation. Sound travels through the whole depth of the brain, and functional ultrasound already maps activity at a fraction of a millimetre in animals and through skull windows in people. Merge Labs is betting that coverage of many regions at once will matter more than single cells, and that the skull, which still blocks good images, can be dealt with by better chips and by molecules that make neurons answer to sound. Its licence of Butterfly Network's ultrasound-on-chip in September 2026 is the hardware side of that bet.