Jeff Bezos is taking a direct operational role in a new AI venture, marking his return to day-to-day company leadership for the first time since leaving Amazon in 2021. The start-up, known as Project Prometheus, is being built around AI systems designed to learn from the physical world and support engineering and manufacturing across areas such as aerospace, automotive tech and advanced computing, reports The New York Times.
Project Prometheus scooped up $6.2 billion in funding on Monday, placing it among the most heavily financed early-stage AI companies globally. A portion of the capital comes from Bezos, who will serve as co-chief executive, according to media reports. The company has not yet been publicly announced. The start-up seems to be working on models that draw on physical experimentation and real-world data, in contrast to large language models that train chiefly on internet text – its official page on LinkedIn reads “AI for the physical economy.”
Related efforts are under way at firms such as Periodic Labs, a newly established research group founded by former employees of major AI companies, and other teams seeking to build models that accelerate scientific and industrial discovery. Companies pursuing this direction argue that AI systems capable of learning from laboratory experiments, simulations or sensor-derived data may be better suited to tasks in advanced manufacturing or robotics.
Bezos will run the company alongside Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist who previously worked on several projects at Google X, including early work on autonomous systems and drone technology. Bajaj later co-founded Alphabet’s life-sciences unit Verily and more recently led Foresite Labs, an incubator for start-ups in data science and biotechnology. Public professional profiles list Project Prometheus operating across San Francisco, London and Zurich. The company has recruited close to 100 employees to date, including researchers and engineers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta’s AI divisions, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bezos has increased his involvement in aerospace projects since leaving Amazon, including a more active role at Blue Origin, the spaceflight company he founded in 2000. Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket completed its second successful flight last week after a long development period. Project Prometheus is expected to explore applications of AI for space-related engineering work, although its scope extends beyond aerospace.Bezos has also invested in several companies pursuing AI for robotics and physical experimentation, including a stake in Physical Intelligence, a firm focused on applying machine intelligence to automated laboratory systems.
Project Prometheus enters a crowded AI market in which companies are attempting to differentiate themselves through specialised scientific and engineering tools. Major Big Tech firms such as Google, Microsoft, Meta and OpenAI are building systems intended to support chemistry, physics and materials research, while independent labs are exploring automated experimental platforms.
The Tech Portal is published by Blue Box Media Private Limited. Our investors have no influence over our reporting. Read our full Ownership and Funding Disclosure →
