Jeff Bezos has re-entered an operational role by becoming co-CEO of Project Prometheus, a well-funded AI startup aiming to build advanced models for engineering, robotics and scientific discovery
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and one of the wealthiest people in the world, is returning to an operational role as co-chief executive of Project Prometheus, an artificial intelligence startup, The New York Times reported.
Bezos’s role as co-chief executive is the first time he has taken a formal operational position at any company since stepping down as Amazon’s chief executive in 2021.
What will Project Prometheus do?
The company is focusing on technology that aligns with Bezos’s longstanding interest in space exploration. Project Prometheus is developing artificial intelligence tools to support engineering and manufacturing across sectors such as computing, aerospace and automobiles. It remains unclear where the company will be headquartered.
Both Project Prometheus and Periodic Labs aim to build AI models that learn in far more complex ways than conventional chatbots.
Why it matters
With Project Prometheus, Bezos is stepping into a crowded artificial intelligence landscape where smaller firms are trying to break through with new software while competing against industry giants such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Meta and Google.
With $6.2 billion at launch and nearly 100 employees from OpenAI, DeepMind and Meta, Project Prometheus is already one of the world’s most well-financed early-stage AI startups.
Who will run Prometheus with Bezos?
Bezos will share the co-chief executive role with Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist who has worked closely with Google co-founder Sergey Brin at Google’s X, known as “The Moonshot Factory”.
Bajaj also helped launch Verily, a life-sciences research lab under Alphabet, and co-founded Foresite Labs, which incubates AI and data-science startups.
The big picture
The startup is part of a wave of companies applying artificial intelligence to physical tasks, including robotics, drug design and scientific discovery. This year, several researchers left OpenAI, Meta and Google DeepMind to establish Periodic Labs, a firm building artificial intelligence that can speed up discoveries in chemistry and physics.
Elon Musk reacts
Billionaire Elon Musk, who himself has ventured into the AI race with his startup xAI, criticised Bezos’s new venture by calling him a “copycat”.
In the past, Musk has made similar accusations after Bezos’s Blue Origin and his SpaceX overlapped in space-launch ambitions.
