Bezos launches new AI startup Project Prometheus with $6.2B in funding

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has established a new AI startup called Project Prometheus, which is expected to help manufacture cars, computers, and spacecraft. Project Peometheus, which Bezos has partly financed and will serve as co-CEO, is launching with $6.2 billion in funding but is reportedly entering a crowded market.

The AI startup is among the well-funded startups in the world, according to The New York Times. It is also the first time Bezos has taken a formal operational role in any company since stepping down as CEO of Amazon in 2021. However, he is reportedly very involved as the founder of Blue Origin.

The AI startup has managed to keep a low profile until now, and details about when it actually started are still unclear. It is also unclear where Project Prometheus will be based. However, it is alleged that the AI startup focuses on technology that aligns with Bezos’ interest in space exploration.

Bajaj co-founds and co-leads Prometheus with Bezos

Media reports reveal that Bezos co-founded and will co-lead the AI startup with physicist and chemist Vik Bajaj. The physicist worked at Google X (The Moonshot Factory) with Google’s co-founder Sergey Brin. Google X produced several large-scale projects, including the drone delivery service Wing and the self-driving car that later became Waymo.  

Bajaj was also among the founders of the health tech firm Verily, which is also owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet. He later co-founded and became the CEO of Foresight Labs, an incubator for AI and data science startups. Bajaj recently left that project and is reportedly focusing solely on Prometheus. The project will utilize AI to enhance physical tasks such as scientific discovery, drug design, and robotics. 

Project Prometheus has already employed over 100 workers, including researchers who have been poached from Meta, OpenAI, and DeepMind. Other well-known AI firms, such as Meta, OpenAI, and Google, are reportedly working on accelerating similar technologies to Prometheus that push the boundaries of AI and physical science.   

Meanwhile, this year alone has reportedly seen several prominent researchers leave Google, Meta, DeepMind, OpenAI, and other AI giants to found Periodic Labs. The Periodic Labs project focuses on building AI technology that can accelerate discoveries in chemistry and physics.

Tech executives say LLMs will achieve breakthroughs soon

Executives at these tech companies and others in related fields reportedly claim that LLMs (Large Language Models) will soon achieve significant scientific breakthroughs. Meta and OpenAI say their projects in theoretical physics and mathematics are already approaching this goal. 

However, firms like Periodic Labs and now Prometheus aim to build AI models that learn more effectively than chatbots. LLMs apparently learn their skills by analyzing large amounts of digital text.

They then pinpoint patterns and learn how to mimic the way real humans construct sentences. LLMs can even learn to write computer programs and solve mathematical problems. 

New AI and tech companies are also reportedly focusing on systems that can learn from the physical world. Meanwhile, Periodic Labs, with approximately $300 million in financial backing, plans to construct its own lab in Northern California. It is alleged that robots will run experiments on a colossal scale.  

Meanwhile, AI systems can, in theory, also learn to perform experiments primarily on their own by analyzing physical trial and error. Project Prometheus will explore similar work. 

Last year, Bezos invested in a startup that applies AI to robotics, known as Physical Intelligence. The startup focuses on bringing general-purpose AI into the real physical world.

The company aims to develop software that is compatible with any robot, thereby eliminating the need to develop separate software for each specific robot. Physical Intelligence raised nearly $400 million in funding from Bezos, venture capital firms Lux Capital and Thrive Capital, and OpenAI.

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