Amazon Founder Jeff Bezos Launches AI Startup Project Prometheus

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has reportedly launched an AI startup where he’ll serve as co-CEO.

The company, dubbed “Project Prometheus,” is launching with $6.2 billion in financing, some of it from Bezos himself, the New York Times (NYT) reported Monday (Nov. 17), citing three sources familiar with the project.

The report notes this is the first time Bezos has taken an official operational role in a company since leaving Amazon four years ago.

Project Prometheus has already hired nearly 100 employees, including researchers recruited from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta, the sources said. The NYT says the company has thus far kept a low profile, and it’s unclear when it was even started or where it will be based.

According to the report, Project Prometheus is part of a wave of companies working to apply AI to physical tasks like robotics or drug design.

This year saw the launch of Periodic Labs, a company founded by veterans of Meta, OpenAI, DeepMind and other major AI players, focused on developing AI that can boost discoveries in fields like chemistry and physics.

That company plans to build its own lab in Northern California where robots will conduct scientific experiments on a massive scale. By examining these efforts, AI systems can, in theory, learn to carry out experiments largely on their own, the report added.

Project Prometheus will delve into similar work, according to the sources familiar with the company’s plans. The company is working on AI to assist in engineering and manufacturing in fields such as computers, automobiles and aerospace, aligning with Bezos’ interest in space travel, the report added.

Joining Bezos as co-founder/co-CEO is Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist who worked with Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin at Google’s X. That project produced Wing, a drone delivery service, and the self-driving vehicle that became Waymo.

In other AI news, PYMNTS spoke recently with Trulioo CEO Vicky Bindra for the “What’s Next in Payments: The Year of the CEO” series. He characterized 2025 as the year in which CEOs came to terms with what artificial intelligence truly means for their companies.

“Is it machine learning? Is it agents? Or is it generative AI? They’re sort of connected,” he said. “But people talk about them as very different blocks. Your ability to be either influenced, supported or disintermediated by any of these technologies is what’s causing the biggest concern or opportunity for businesses.”