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Jeff Bezos has returned to a CEO role at Prometheus, a $41 billion AI startup focused on engineering the physical world. The venture aims to apply artificial intelligence to industrial systems, infrastructure, and real-world challenges beyond traditional software applications.
Prometheus is focused on ’physical AI’, which is a technology designed to tackle real-world engineering challenges. The startup's long-term goal is to develop an “artificial general engineer,” an AI system capable of helping engineers design and optimize products such as jet engines, semiconductor chips, medical devices, and pharmaceutical compounds.
Jeff Bezos is back in his executive leadership role at Prometheus, an artificial intelligence startup focused on transforming the way complex physical products are designed, engineered, and manufactured.
The company recently secured a $12 billion Series B funding round and is now valued at approximately $41 billion. Prometheus is co-led by Bezos and former Google executive Vik Bajaj and has attracted backing from major investors including JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, and Goldman Sachs.
The venture also marks Bezos’s first chief executive role since stepping down as Amazon CEO in 2021. Although Prometheus operates independently from Amazon and aerospace company Blue Origin, Bezos has indicated that industrial businesses could benefit significantly from the technologies the startup is developing.
The 62-year-old billionaire says that being a co-CEO, alongside co-founder Vik Bajaj, is “Type 2 fun,” he told CNBC’s David Faber on “Squawk on the Street”. “It’s that fun where, after you finish climbing the mountain, you’re like, ‘Oh boy, that was fun climbing the mountain.’”
“It is a grind, but it’s a good grind,” said Bezos. “Prometheus is the bulk of my time. I’m also spending a lot of time on Blue [Origin]. I’m spending a lot of time on AI at Amazon. So the common thread in my time spent is mostly AI.”
Bezos, for his part, expressed excitement for the “many miles” of hard work ahead of him. “I started out in late ’24 with Vik as an investor in Prometheus ... and as I saw what we were doing, I became so impressed by what was happening, and the potential, that I decided I couldn’t sit on the sidelines, and I needed to jump in with both feet. So here I am,” he said.
Operating from hubs including San Francisco, London, and Zurich, Prometheus currently employs around 150 people. Since its launch, the startup has reportedly raised more than $18 billion in funding, underscoring growing investor confidence in AI applications beyond traditional software and consumer-facing tools.
According to the company's vision, AI could significantly shorten product development cycles by automating portions of design, simulation, and prototyping that currently require years of effort from large engineering teams.
The company has said its objective is to help engineers bring ideas to market much faster by streamlining the complex processes involved in physical product development.
