Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is officially stepping back into the startup trenches — this time, as co-CEO of an artificial intelligence company called Project Prometheus.

According to The New York Times report cited by TechCrunch, Bezos is investing in and co-leading the $6.2 billion-funded venture alongside Vik Bajaj, the former head of Google’s life sciences division and co-founder of Alphabet’s biotech arm, Verily. Bajaj reportedly left Foresite Labs — an AI-focused affiliate of Foresite Capital — to join Bezos in launching the new company.

AI for the “Physical Economy”

Project Prometheus is building what it calls “AI for the physical economy”, a reference to artificial intelligence designed to enhance industries that make and move things — including manufacturing, aerospace, automotive, and engineering.

The company’s LinkedIn page hints at ambitions similar to Periodic Labs, another startup working on digital-twin simulations that teach AI to understand and optimize real-world physics.

The move marks Bezos’s first hands-on operational role since stepping away from day-to-day leadership at Amazon in 2021. Observers note that this pivot signals a growing trend among Silicon Valley veterans returning to direct innovation after years of boardroom distance — a theme seen with executives from Google, Apple, and Meta launching AI-native ventures of their own.

Billion-Dollar Brainpower

Early reports suggest that Project Prometheus has already hired nearly 100 employees, including researchers from top AI outfits like OpenAI, Meta, and Google DeepMind.

With over $6 billion in initial funding, the company instantly enters the upper echelon of AI startups, rivaling OpenAI’s early-stage capitalization and dwarfing other new entrants in the “AI for industry” space.

Bezos 2.0: From Clouds to Code

For Bezos, this move echoes his early Amazon years — a return to hands-on building. Where Amazon revolutionized e-commerce and cloud computing, Prometheus may aim to bring that same operational intensity to AI systems that design materials, streamline logistics, and potentially power future robotics.

Neither Amazon nor Bajaj provided official comment as of press time, but analysts see Bezos’s re-entry into tech leadership as a pivotal moment for AI commercialization.

The Bigger Picture

Bezos’s comeback also highlights a broader industry evolution:
the intersection of deep science, industrial automation, and large-scale AI.
While most consumer-facing AI focuses on text, images, and chatbots, Project Prometheus aims to tackle the physical world — where breakthroughs could reshape trillion-dollar sectors such as supply chain, construction, and aerospace engineering.

If Bezos’s track record is any indicator, Prometheus could ignite a new race to merge physical and digital intelligence — this time, not to sell books, but to reimagine the way the world builds.