NYT: Jeff Bezos to Take Up Co-Chief Executive Role in AI Start-Up Project Prometheus

Jeff Bezos has been the leader and face of Amazon for a long time. However, in July 2021, Bezos stepped down from the company’s CEO role. Now, according to a New York Times report, Bezos is stepping into the role of co-CEO of Project Prometheus.

For those uninitiated, the company has already raised $6.2 billion, including contributions from Bezos himself. At this point, it is one of the most funded AI startups in the early stages in the whole world.

Per the NYT report, Bezos will take up the role of co-chief executive, marking his first formal operational role since stepping down from Amazon. He’ll share leadership with Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist with a track record at Google X and Verily. Bajaj also co-founded Foresite Labs, a data science and AI incubator, before joining Project Prometheus.

The venture in question plans to develop AI systems for engineering, manufacturing, aerospace, automobiles, and other physical sciences. According to reports, Project Prometheus has already hired nearly 100 employees, including researchers from OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta.

Unlike typical large language models, which learn from digital text, Project Prometheus intends to create AI that learns from the physical world, potentially running experiments and improving scientific processes autonomously.

With its massive initial funding, Project Prometheus joins a growing number of AI start-ups focusing on machine learning for robotics, scientific discovery, and real-world problem-solving.