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Legislation to establish a regulatory framework for digital tokens has been thrown into turmoil — by one of its biggest champions.

Crypto setback

Bitcoin investors are accustomed to market volatility. But what about regulatory uncertainty?

In a surprise move, Senator Tim Scott, Republican of South Carolina and chair of the Senate Banking Committee, postponed a vote scheduled for Thursday on a draft bill that would establish a regulatory framework for cryptocurrencies.

Among the opponents of the bill: Coinbase, the big and politically influential crypto exchange. “After reviewing the Senate Banking draft text over the last 48hrs, Coinbase unfortunately can’t support the bill as written,” Brian Armstrong, the company’s C.E.O., wrote on X, drawing both support and criticism.

A recap: The legislation, known as the Clarity Act, would determine regulatory authority over crypto between the S.E.C. to the less-aggressive Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Crypto executives, who have become major political donors, have pushed for significantly lighter oversight.

The measure once had bipartisan support. But Senate Democrats have pushed for ethics rules limiting U.S. officials from “issuing, endorsing or profiting” from crypto — an attempt to restrict the Trump family’s growing financial ties to the industry.

Then Armstrong raised his objections. The Coinbase C.E.O. argues that the current version would:

The future of stablecoins, a fast-growing segment of digital finance, has become a major sticking point. Issuers of those tokens, including Circle, want a legal framework that will let them pay interest on those assets, as banks do with many deposit accounts, to attract more customers.

That would also be a big deal for Coinbase, which offers some customers who hold Circle’s USDC token the chance to earn 3.5 percent in “rewards.”

Banks have stepped up their lobbying efforts in recent days as well. They’ve pushed back on blessing stablecoin rewards programs, which Armstrong suggested was an effort by traditional lenders to “ban their competition.”

What’s next? Bitcoin was trading around $96,800 this morning, but it has declined from the two-month high it reached on Wednesday.

It’s unclear what the next steps are for the Clarity Act. But Senator Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming and an avowedly pro-crypto member of the banking committee, bemoaned the bill’s forestalling in a statement. She added that the recent “response from some in the industry proves they just are not ready” for legislation to help the sector.

Skild AI, a robotics company building an “omni-bodied” brain to operate any robot for any task, announced Wednesday that it has raised $1.4 billion, tripling its valuation to over $14 billion.

The fundraise comes just over seven months after Skild raised a $135 million Series B at a $4.5 billion valuation.

SoftBank Group led the startup’s latest financing, which included participation from NVentures, Nvidia’s venture capital arm, entities administered by Macquarie Capital, Bezos Expeditions, Disruptive and 1789 Capital. Several strategic investors also wrote checks into the round, including Samsung, LG Technology Ventures, Schneider Electric, CommonSpirit Health, and Salesforce Ventures .

The company says it grew from zero to about $30 million revenue “in just a few months” in 2025, and “is growing exponentially.” It is deploying its technology in a variety of environments, including security and facility inspection, last-mile and point-to-point delivery, warehouses, manufacturing, data centers, and construction tasks, among others.

Looking ahead, Skild AI plans to deploy robotics in consumers homes, with enterprise tasks as the first application.

Last year was a good year for robotic startup funding. Overall, robotics startups raised $13.8 billion in funding in 2025, up from $7.8 billion in 2024 and even topping the $13.1 billion raised in the peak venture funding year of 2021.

Another example of a company building a brain for robots that recently raised capital is Flexion. The Zurich-based startup, which says it’s “building the brain for humanoid and human-capable robots,” raised $50 million in funding in November.

Skild AI claims to be building the industry’s “first unified robotics foundation model” called the Skild Brain. The company says its model differs from traditional ones that are tailored to specific robot designs in that it is omni-bodied and “can control any robot without prior knowledge of their exact body form,” including quadrupeds, humanoids, tabletop arms and mobile manipulators.

As such, Skild AI says its technology gives robots the ability to perform simpler tasks such as household chores like cleaning, loading a dishwasher and making an egg, as well as more physically demanding activities such as navigating slippery terrain.

“The Skild Brain can control robots it has never trained on, adapting in real time to extreme changes in form or environments. The model is forced to adapt rather than memorize — much like intelligence in nature,” said Deepak Pathak, CEO and co-founder of Skild AI, in a release.

Just when you thought the circular deals couldn’t get any more circular, OpenAI has invested in CEO Sam Altman’s brain computer interface (BCI) startup Merge Labs.

Merge Labs, which defines itself as a “research lab” dedicated to “bridging biological and artificial intelligence to maximize human ability,” came out of stealth on Thursday with an undisclosed seed round. A source familiar with the matter confirmed previous reports that OpenAI wrote the largest single check in Merge Labs’ $250 million seed round at an $850 million valuation.

“Our individual experience of the world arises from billions of active neurons,” reads a statement from Merge Labs. “If we can interface with these neurons at scale, we could restore lost abilities, support healthier brain states, deepen our connection with each other, and expand what we can imagine and create alongside advanced AI.”

Merge Labs said it intends to reach these feats noninvasively by developing “entirely new technologies that connect with neurons using molecules instead of electrodes” to “transit and receive information using deep-reaching modalities like ultrasound.”

The move deepens Altman’s competition with Elon Musk, whose startup Neuralink is also developing computer interface chips that allow people who suffer from severe paralysis to control devices with their thoughts. Neuralink currently requires invasive surgery for implantation, where a surgical robot removes a small piece of skull and inserts ultra-fine electrode threads into the brain to read neural signals. The company last raised a $650 million Series E at a $9 billion valuation in June 2025.

While there are undoubtedly medical use cases for BCIs, Merge Labs seems more focused on using the technology to fulfill a Silicon Valley fantasy of combining human biology with AI to give us superhuman capabilities.

“Brain computer interfaces (BCIs) are an important new frontier,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “They open new ways to communicate, learn, and interact with technology. BCIs will create a natural, human-centered way for anyone to seamlessly interact with AI. This is why OpenAI is participating in Merge Labs’ seed round.”

Aside from Altman, other co-founders include Alex Blania (CEO) and Sandro Herbig (product and engineering lead) at Tools for Humanity, another Altman-backed company (and creator of the eye-scanning World orbs); Tyson Aflalo and Sumner Norman, co-founders of implantable neural tech company Forest Neurotech; and Mikhail Shapiro, a researcher at Caltech.

Blania and Herbig said in separate social media posts that they would continue their roles at Tools for Humanity. Merge Labs did not confirm whether Alfalo and Norman would maintain their positions at Forest Neurotech, only saying that the company would continue operating and will have a “wonderful working relationship” with Merge. Shapiro intends to continue teaching at Caltech.

A spokesperson told TechCrunch that the co-founders are also Merge Labs’ board members.

As part of the deal, OpenAI will work with Merge Labs on scientific foundation models and other frontier tools to “accelerate progress.” In its blog post, OpenAI noted that AI will not only help accelerate R&D in bioengineering, neuroscience, and device engineering, but that the interfaces will also benefit from AI operating systems that “can interpret intent, adapt to individuals, and operate reliably with limited and noisy signals.”

In other words, Merge Labs could function as a remote control for OpenAI’s software. That leads into the circular nature of the deal: If Merge Labs succeeds, it could drive more users to OpenAI, which then justifies OpenAI’s investment into the company. It also increases the value of a startup Altman owns using resources from a company he runs.

OpenAI is also working with Jony Ive’s startup io, which it acquired last year, to produce a piece of AI hardware that doesn’t rely on a screen. Recent unconfirmed leaks suggest the device might be an earbud.

OpenAI primarily invests through the OpenAI Startup Fund, which has invested in several other startups connected to Altman, including Red Queen Bio, Rain AI, and Harvey. OpenAI has also entered into commercial agreements with startups Altman personally owns or chairs, including nuclear fusion startup Helion Energy and nuclear fission company Oklo.

Altman has been dreaming about the “merge” — the idea that humans and machines will merge — since at least 2017 when he published a blog post guessing it would happen somewhere between 2025 and 2075. He also speculated that the merge could take many forms, including plugging electrons into our brains or becoming “really close friends with a chatbot.”

He said a merge is our “best-case scenario” for humanity surviving against superintelligence AI, which he describes as a separate species that’s in conflict with humans.

“Although the merge has already begun, it’s going to get a lot weirder,” Altman wrote. “We will be the first species ever to design our own descendants. My guess is that we can either be the biological bootloader for digital intelligence and then fade into an evolutionary tree branch, or we can figure out what a successful merge looks like.”

TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI and Merge Labs for more information.

BlackRock raised $12.5 billion for the AI investment partnership it formed in 2024 with Microsoft and United Arab Emirates-backed MGX, giving it more firepower to invest in data centers and energy resources.

Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock, said Thursday it raised the money from the founders of the partnership, Global AI Infrastructure Investment Partnership, and outside investors. The partnership is aiming to invest $30 billion in equity and as much as $100 billion when including debt.

The partnership last year invested in a $40 billion consortium deal to acquire Aligned Data Centers that’s expected to close in the first half of this year. MGX, which made an additional investment as part of the consortium, will be Aligned’s largest shareholder following the sale, The Information reported.