Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will be co-CEO at a new artificial intelligence startup specialising in engineering and manufacturing, his first major role since stepping down from Amazon.
The company, known as Project Prometheus, has already secured US$6.2 billion in funding, the New York Times reported. Physicist and chemist Vik Bajaj, former head of Google’s Verily life sciences research lab, will also be its co-CEO.
Bezos stepped down as Amazon’s CEO in 2021, though he has remained as executive chair. “In the Exec Chair role, I intend to focus my energies and attention on new products and early initiatives,” he wrote at the time.
This will be Bezos’ first official operational role in any company since exiting as Amazon’s CEO. He is involved with space technology company Blue Origin, which he founded in 2000, but does not hold an operational title.
Bezos and Bajaj have not yet disclosed any details on Project Prometheus’ technology, where the company will be based, or exactly when it was founded. It will support engineering and manufacturing for computers, aerospace technology, and automobiles.
The company’s work will be similar to AI startup Periodic Labs, which hopes to train AI systems to perform scientific experiments autonomously, according to the New York Times.
Project Prometheus reportedly has nearly 100 employees, having recruited AI researchers from other businesses like OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta.
Bajaj also was previously co-founder and CEO of Foresite Labs, which incubated new AI and data science startups. Bezos invested in AI robotics startup Physical Intelligence in 2024.
