Project Prometheus is a mysterious AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos. What does it do?
Project Prometheus, the mysterious AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos, is raising around $10 billion (€8.49 billion) in fresh capital at a post-money valuation of around $38 billion (€32.27 billion), according to multiple sources.
The funding round is still ongoing and the details could change. If completed, it would be the company’s first funding since the $6.2 billion (€5.27 billion) it raised when it was founded last year. A spokeswoman for the startup declined to comment.
Bezos co-founded Project Prometheus in November. Little is known about the startup other than that it focuses on physical AI designed to interact with real-world industrial processes such as manufacturing, aerospace engineering and semiconductor production, rather than purely digital tasks such as chatbots.
The other co-founder is co-CEO Vik Bajaj, who previously held senior positions at Google X, Alphabet’s “moonshot” lab, and is an associate professor at Stanford University School of Medicine.
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Project Prometheus has purchased office space in San Francisco and poached top talent from OpenAI. According to LinkedIn, other new hires come from xAI and Google DeepMind; According to the network, the company employs between 50 and 200 people.
Bezos has also held initial discussions with investors in the Middle East and Southeast Asia to raise up to $100 billion (84.93 billion euros) for an investment fund that would acquire or invest in companies that would benefit from technology developed by Project Prometheus, The New York Times reported last month.
Bezos is competing with the AI giants
Project Prometheus enters a competitive field dominated by giants like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, xAI and Anthropic, all of which have a head start in developing AI models and recruiting top talent.
It is also under pressure from other startups focused on physical AI, such as Periodic Labs, founded by William Fedus, a prominent AI researcher best known for his work at OpenAI, where he served as vice president of research and co-led the post-training efforts behind ChatGPT.
What Project Prometheus has, of course, is Bezos and his $224 billion account.
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