Project Prometheus is already backed with $6.2bn, partly funded by Bezos, reports the New York Times.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and one of the world’s wealthiest men with a net worth of $256bn, is set to become the co-CEO of a new AI venture called Project Prometheus, reports the New York Times.
According to the publication, Project Prometheus will apply AI to physical tasks, including in robotics, drug development and scientific discoveries. The company will focus on AI that assists engineering and manufacturing in a number of sectors, including in computers, aerospace and automobiles.
The New York Times reports that Project Prometheus is already backed with $6.2bn, partly funded by Bezos. Vik Bajaj, the company’s co-founder, will be leading the company as co-CEO alongside Bezos.
Bajaj, a physicist and chemist, was previously the chief scientific officer (CSO) at Google Life Sciences, the chair and CSO at Verily and held a number of academic positions at University of California, Berkley and Stanford University’s School of Medicine.
More recently, Bajaj led Foresite Labs as its co-founder and CEO. He left the company to start this new project with Bezos, sources told the publication.
According to Project Prometheus’ LinkedIn page, Nal Kalchbrenner, an angel investor and a former research scientist with Google, is listed as the company’s founding member of technical staff.
Moreover, sources say that the company has already hired nearly 100 employees, including researchers poached from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta. Although, it is unclear when Project Prometheus was founded and where it will be based.
Bezos’ new venture is one among a growing list of companies attempting to tackle AI for physical tasks. Earlier this year, several former researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other large AI projects left to start a new venture called Periodic Labs, which also focuses on accelerating scientific discoveries.
Last year, the Amazon founder also invested in a start-up applying AI to robots, called Physical Intelligence. Meanwhile, Amazon’s new operations technologies Blue Jay and Project Eluna are furthering the company’s venture into utilising physical AI.
Also, in a recent earnings call, SoftBank chief financial officer Yoshimitsu Goto referenced taking “bold steps” into physical AI with the acquisition of ABB Robotics for around $5.4bn, as well as with its continued investments into OpenAI and Arm.
Project Prometheus is Bezos’ first formal operational role in a company since he stepped down as Amazon CEO in 2021. Though he is strongly involved with space-tech company Blue Origin as its founder.
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Jeff Bezos. Image: Daniel Oberhaus via Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
