Jeff Bezos to lead new AI start-up Project Prometheus with $6.2 billion backing: Report

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com and one of the world’s richest individuals, is taking an operational role as co-chief executive of a new artificial intelligence start-up, Project Prometheus, the New York Times reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.

The start-up is launching with about $6.2 billion in funding, partly from Bezos himself, making it one of the most heavily financed early-stage AI firms globally, the newspaper said.

It would be Bezos’s first formal management role outside Amazon since he stepped down as CEO in 2021.

While he remains the founder of space company Blue Origin, he does not hold an operational title there.

Project Prometheus will focus on AI technologies for engineering and manufacturing across sectors, including computing, aerospace and automotive industries, the report said.

The company’s launch date and headquarters location remain unclear.

Bezos will co-lead the company with physicist and chemist Vik Bajaj, who previously worked at Google’s X “Moonshot Factory” and co-founded Alphabet’s life sciences unit Verily, the Times reported. Bajaj also co-founded Foresite Labs, which he recently left to join the new venture.

The company has hired nearly 100 employees, including researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta, the report said.

Reacting to the report, Elon Musk, who has founded artificial intelligence company xAI, quipped, “Haha no way”, followed by a copycat emoji.

Project Prometheus joins a growing cohort of firms developing AI systems aimed at accelerating scientific and industrial processes, an area attracting interest from investors and researchers who believe AI can advance breakthroughs in physics, chemistry, robotics and drug discovery.

Bezos has previously invested in Physical Intelligence, another start-up applying AI to robotics.

Start-ups such as Periodic Labs, founded by researchers who left Meta, OpenAI and DeepMind, are also building AI systems trained not just on digital text but on data generated from physical experiments.