In November, Jeff Bezos announced he would become co-CEO of a startup called Prometheus - named, presumably, for the Titan who stole fire from the gods, not for the 2012 Ridley Scott film that stole two hours of your life. At the time, the company said it would focus on “physical AI,” a buzzy term for applying deep learning to robotics and manufacturing, but specifics were about as scarce as humility at a billionaire's cocktail party. Now, with a fresh $12 billion funding round (on top of an initial $6.2 billion last year), Bezos and co-founder Vik Bajaj have offered slightly more detail.
The startup, valued at $41 billion and employing 150 people, has secured cash from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and others - plus a generous helping from Bezos' own couch cushions. Much of that money will go toward buying compute. “One of the reasons we’ve had to raise a significant amount of funding is because… what we’re doing is very compute-intensive and we need to create that data,” Bezos told CNBC, in what may be the most expensive way to say 'we need more servers' ever uttered.
So what exactly is Prometheus building? Bezos summarized the company’s focus as creating an “artificial general engineer.” “All societal wealth is driven by invention,” he told The New York Times. “Six thousand years ago, somebody invented the plow, and we all got wealthier. Then, much later, somebody invented the steam engine, and we all got wealthier.” He added that Prometheus seeks to “dramatically accelerate that invention loop” - presumably so we can skip straight to the jetpacks. Speaking to CNBC, he upgraded the goal to producing “civilizational wealth,” not just wealth for a single individual or company, which is a noble sentiment from a man whose personal fortune could buy a small country.
Bajaj offered a more grounded take: designing new technologies “takes a thousand human minds creatively working together” and is “one of the most complex things we do as a species.” He noted that engineers “use tools that really haven’t changed for decades,” so Prometheus wants to arm them with tools that let them design things “much more quickly.” Because nothing says 'disruption' like making the design process slightly less tedious.
A couple of months ago, reports emerged that Bezos and Bajaj are raising a $100 billion investment fund to back companies that could leverage Prometheus’ output - potentially including Bezos' own Blue Origin. The startup is still early, with no specific products announced, and it’s not alone: numerous other startups are exploring AI’s applications in the physical world, from training world models for robotics to overhauling manufacturing. But with this funding round, Prometheus has a significant advantage: enough cash to outspend competitors and maybe, just maybe, invent the plow 2.0.