Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos is once again taking a hands-on role in a new venture. He is partially backing a new artificial intelligence startup named Project Prometheus, which has raised $6.2 billion in funding. Bezos will also serve as co-chief executive of the new company.
He will share the chief executive position with Vik Bajaj. Bajaj previously led and co-founded Google’s life sciences division. He also co-founded Verily, a biotech startup owned by Alphabet, and is the co-founder of Foresite Labs, an AI-focused affiliate of an investment firm. The report states Bajaj recently left that firm to start Project Prometheus.
This move marks Bezos’s return to operational duties for the first time since he stepped away from Amazon in 2021.
According to the report, the startup will build AI products for engineering and manufacturing. These products will be applied across various fields, including computers, aerospace, and automobiles. Project Prometheus describes its focus as “AI for the physical economy.” Its work is noted to resemble that of another company, Periodic Labs, which builds technology to accelerate scientific research by simulating the physical world to train AI models.
The company is already staffed with nearly 100 employees. This team includes researchers from leading AI firms such as Meta, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind.