Jeff Bezos is taking up CEO’s job again, and it’s not Amazon – Firstpost

Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and one of the richest men in the world, is investing both his time and money into a new artificial intelligence start-up where he will serve as co-chief executive. The company, called Project Prometheus, is launching with $6.2 billion in funding, partly contributed by Bezos. This makes it one of the most funded early-stage start-ups globally, according to three people familiar with the development, who spoke anonymously as details remain unknown, as reported the new York Times,

It is the first time that Bezos has held a formal operating position since leaving his role as Amazon chief executive in July 2021. Although he is deeply involved with SpaceX’s competitor Blue Origin, he only holds the title of founder there. Since stepping away from Amazon, he has drawn attention both for his personal life, including a celebrity-packed wedding in Venice this year and a renewed focus on Blue Origin, as well as growing interest in the race to advance artificial intelligence.

Prometheus enters the competitive AI landscape

The new company puts Bezos at the center of an increasingly competitive AI field, where smaller companies are trying to define their place alongside major players like Google, Meta and Microsoft and specialist companies including OpenAI and Anthropic. Project Prometheus has been operating quietly until now, and its founding date is unclear. The start-up will work on AI designed to aid engineering and manufacturing in areas such as computing, aerospace and automotive technologies, in line with Bezos’ broader interest in space exploration. Its base of operations has not yet been confirmed.

Bezos will lead the company with co-founder Vic Bajaj, a physicist and chemist best known for his work with Google co-founder Sergey Brin at Google The research division created projects such as Wing, a drone delivery service, and the autonomous vehicle initiative that evolved into Waymo. In 2015, Bajaj helped set up Verily, a life sciences research laboratory under Alphabet. He later co-founded Foresight Labs in 2018, and recently left that role to focus on Project Prometheus, as cited by the same three people. new York Times.

Project Prometheus is part of a growing wave of companies applying AI to physical tasks such as robotics, drug development and scientific research. This year, many researchers left Meta, OpenAI, Google DeepMind and other leading AI organizations to set up Periodic Labs, which aims to accelerate discoveries in physics and chemistry. Last year, Bezos invested in Physical Intelligence, which applies AI to robotics. The substantial funding pool of $6.2 billion positions Project Prometheus competitively in the high-cost race to build advanced AI technologies; By comparison, Thinking Machines Lab, formed by former OpenAI employees, secured $2 billion this year.

The start-up has already recruited about 100 employees, according to three people familiar with its recruitment efforts, including researchers from leading AI institutes like OpenAI, DeepMind and Meta.

Major AI organizations – including OpenAI, Google and Meta – are already developing technologies aimed at accelerating progress in physics. Two researchers from Google DeepMind recently won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, a system that advances drug discovery. These companies often report that large language models, the systems behind tools like ChatGPT, are approaching their potential to make breakthroughs in areas including mathematics and theoretical physics.

However, companies like Periodic Labs and Project Prometheus aim to develop AI that learns in more complex ways than language models. Large language models operate by analyzing extensive digital text, identifying patterns in sources such as Wikipedia articles and news reports, and mimicking human writing. In contrast, new companies want to create systems that also learn directly from the physical world. With $300 million, Periodic Labs plans to build a laboratory in Northern California where robots will conduct large-scale scientific experiments. By analyzing this physical trial and error, AI can theoretically learn to experiment independently.

Project Prometheus is expected to explore similar directions, according to persons familiar with its plans.