Jeff Bezos is one of the richest and most famous tech CEOs in the world, but he hasn’t actually been the CEO of anything since 2021. That’s changing now that he’s taking on the role of co-CEO of a new AI company, according to a New York Times report citing three people familiar with the company.
Largely named Project Prometheus (and not to be confused with the NASA project of the same name), the company will focus on using AI to advance breakthroughs in research, engineering, manufacturing, and other areas that are said to be part of the “physical economy” – as opposed to software applications, which is probably the first thing most people in the general public think of when they hear “AI.”
Bezos’ co-CEO will be Dr. Vic Bajaj, a chemist and physicist who previously worked at Google (for example, it developed technologies that would later underpin Google’s Waymo service.) Bajaj also worked at Verily, another Alphabet-backed research group focused on life sciences, and Foresight Labs, an incubator for new AI companies.