In November, Jeff Bezos announced that he would become co-CEO of a new startup called Prometheus. At the time, the startup said it would focus on “physical AI” — a common term for applying the same deep learning principles behind large language models or generative AI to things like robotics and manufacturing — but specifics were scarce. Now, with a big new round of funding in hand, Bezos and co-founder Vic Bajaj have talked about it in a little more detail.
The funding round is significant – after a $6.2 billion seed round last year, now $12 billion, for a valuation of $41 billion. The funding comes from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and others, as well as a large sum from Bezos’ coffers. The startup currently employs 150 people.
Most of that funding will be used to buy computers. “O“We needed to raise a large amount of funding because … what we’re doing is very compute-intensive and we need to generate that data,” Bezos told CNBC.
So what exactly are they doing? Bezos summarized a key part of the company’s focus as creating an “artificial general engineer”.
“All social wealth is driven by invention,” Bezos told The New York Times. “Six thousand years ago, someone invented the plow, and we all got rich. Then, much later, someone invented the steam engine, and we all got rich.” He further stated that “What Prometheus wants to do is offer a set of tools that dramatically accelerates that invention cycle.”
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