Jeff Bezos steps back into the C-suite as co-CEO of Project Prometheus, a $6.2B AI startup betting big on real-world, industrial-scale applications.
Jeff Bezos is returning to an operational role.
Four years after stepping down as the chief executive of Amazon, the world’s third-richest man has appointed himself co-C.E.O. of Project Prometheus, a new artificial intelligence startup backed by $6.2 billion in initial funding.
According to reporting by The New York Times’s Cade Metz, the venture represents a significant escalation in Bezos’s commitment to the AI sector. While he has remained active as the founder of the rocket company Blue Origin, he has not held a formal corporate leadership position since stepping down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021.
Engineering the Physical World
Project Prometheus distinguishes itself from the crowded field of chatbots and generative text models by focusing on “physical AI”—systems with real-world applications in engineering and manufacturing. The company aims to deploy its technology across high-stakes industries, including aerospace, automotive, and computer hardware.
Bezos is funding a portion of the company’s massive war chest himself. The $6.2 billion capital injection is intended to give the startup an immediate competitive edge, addressing the astronomical costs associated with training and running advanced AI models.
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A New Partnership
Bezos will share the chief executive title with Vik Bajaj, a former Google executive and founder of the A.I. incubator Foresite Labs. The company has already quietly assembled a team of nearly 100 employees.
Specific details regarding the company’s founding date and headquarters remain undisclosed.
The Context
This move aligns with Bezos’s growing interest in the intersection of artificial intelligence and robotics. DealBook previously reported that he led a $400 million investment last year in Physical Intelligence, a startup dedicated to creating “brains” for robots.
While Bezos has recently cautioned that the AI market may be in a bubble, his direct entry into the C-suite of Project Prometheus suggests he believes the technology’s application in physical engineering remains a durable and transformative opportunity.
