Jeff Bezos founds AI startup Project Prometheus, takes on co-chief executive role

The company will focus on AI products for cars, spacecraft, computers, and their engineering applications. It’s one of the richest start-ups in the world, having secured $6.2 billion in funding.

Three sources have confirmed this information to The New York Times (NYT) on the condition of anonymity.

This move marks Jeff Bezos' return to formally leading a company. Since retiring from Amazon in July 2021, he has been actively involved with Blue Origin, a direct competitor of Elon Musk’s SpaceX space rocket business. However, apart from that, Bezos has been making headlines more often due to his personal life, rather than his business.

Bezos’ wedding to Lauren Sanchez this June in Venice attracted A-listers from the entertainment business as well as protesters who urged the billionaire to pay more tax, as he can afford to “rent Venice.”

While Jeff Bezos plans to spend up to $20 million on his wedding in Venice just remember: he reportedly pays only a 1.1% true tax rate.

And now Senate Republicans are cutting Medicaid and SNAP to avoid taxing him and other billionaires more.

Tax the damn rich. https://t.co/mVPBkAQ1Bn

undefined Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) June 24, 2025

Bezos, according to the NYT, partially financed Project Prometheus, making the startup’s funding as big as $6.2 billion.

The new company is now focusing on AI that will assist in a variety of fields, including computers, aerospace, and other machines (as well as their manufacturing), to support trips to space – another headline-making project, with the latest having the pop star Katy Perry literally on board.

We just completed our 11th human spaceflight and the 31st flight of the New Shepard program. The astronaut crew included Aisha Bowe, Amanda Nguyễn, Gayle King, Katy Perry, Kerianne Flynn, and Lauren Sánchez.

To date, New Shepard has flown 58 people to space. Read more:… pic.twitter.com/Qglt1p1Wc2

undefined Blue Origin (@blueorigin) April 14, 2025

So far, Project Prometheus has hired almost 100 AI professionals, specializing in research and headhunted from other AI market leaders such as OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta, according to NYT sources.
Although it remains unclear when exactly this project began or where it will be based, Bezos has recently been showing interest in AI companies.

Bezos' co-chief executive is Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist who worked closely with Google's co-founder Sergey Brin at Google's X, a research effort often called “The Moonshot Factory.”

For example, according to CNBC, all of Bezos' family’s (Bezos Expeditions) investments made in 2024 are in the AI sector. He has previously shown support for niche AI companies, such as Toloka, which has previously worked wth Amazon, Microsoft, and Anthropic. It received a $72 million investment influx, according to Reuters.

Headhunting AI professionals has been an ongoing war for a while now. The biggest giants in this market, Meta, Microsoft, and Google, see their staff come and go as career and bigger pay opportunities arise constantly.

Just this June, Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, said that Meta was approaching his company’s staff with offers of $100 million sign-on bonuses, which is larger than some of their annual salaries.

Although the exact transfer details in this case remain a secret, an example of an employee leaving OpenAI for Meta is Shengjia Zhao. This former lead scientist at OpenAI joined Meta as chief scientist for its Superintelligence Labs.

And it works both ways. According to The Observer, Chaya Nayak, a longtime Meta AI researcher, left the company after about nine years in favor of OpenAI.

The rotation of AI specialists in the market remains a persistent issue for companies that struggle to retain them. At the same time, the tech job market allows it as the competition for investments in AI remains fierce.

Tech giants continue to pour billions into AI research, talent, and product development. Google’s plans to invest $40 billion in Texas data centers, Anthropic’s plan to invest $50 billion in building data centers in the US, and Cisco raising its annual forecast for AI-driven demand for networking gear are just a few of the latest examples.

Jeff Bezos’ Project Prometheus, which has secured $6.2 billion in funding, makes a strong entrance to a market that’s already extremely competitive.

“A budget like this allows Prometheus to have the flexibility to buy up rare compute, draw in top researchers, and iterate on proprietary data sets known for being hard (or costly) to come by in industrial settings,” writes Gregory Zuckerman via FindArticles.

Unlock more exclusive Cybernews content on YouTube.