Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is reportedly diving into a new venture: the billionaire is among the backers of an AI startup named Project Prometheus, which has secured $6.2 billion in investment. According to the New York Times, citing sources close to the matter, Bezos will also serve as co-CEO of this enterprise.
He will share the chief executive role with Vik Bajaj, who previously headed and co-founded Google's life sciences arm. Bajaj is also a co-founder of Verily, Alphabet’s biotech company, and helped launch Foresite Labs, an AI-driven initiative under Foresite Capital. The report mentions that Bajaj recently departed Foresite Labs to establish Prometheus.
This marks Bezos’s first return to a hands-on operational role since he left Amazon in 2021.
The NYT reports that the new company intends to develop AI solutions for engineering and manufacturing across sectors such as computing, aerospace, and automotive. Project Prometheus, according to its LinkedIn profile, is dedicated to “AI for the physical economy,” and its efforts are said to be similar to those of Periodic Labs, which creates technology that accelerates scientific discovery by simulating the physical world to train AI systems.
The startup has already assembled a team of nearly 100 employees, including talent from leading AI organizations like Meta, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind, the report added.
Requests for comment sent to Amazon and Bajaj were not immediately answered.
