Jeff Bezos set to step into a Co-Chief Exec role at AI startup

Jeff Bezos is to take on the role of Co-Chief Executive at an AI startup called Project Prometheus, according to reports.

Paul Hill Neowin @ziks_99 · Nov 17, 2025 08:02 EST with 1 comment

Jeff Bezos at New Shepards West Texas launch facility before the rockets maiden voyage

Jeff Bezos is taking on his first active operation role as Co-Chief Executive since leaving Amazon. His role will be at a new AI startup called Project Prometheus, which has started out with $6.2 billion in funding. This company is focusing on building artificial intelligence for engineering and manufacturing in industries such as automobiles, computers, and aerospace - an area where Bezos already has a notable footprint with Blue Origin.

Unlike current AI companies that have been training their models on books, images, and videos, Project Prometheus will be building AI models that learn from the physical world, scientific experimentation and trial and error. It’s not the first physical AI company to exist, but the field is on the cutting edge.

Bezos stepped down as Amazon CEO four and a half years ago in July 2021. Since then, he has been focusing on other interests, such as his rocket company Blue Origin, where he is the founder. Joining him as the Co-Chief Executive at Project Prometheus is Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist. Bajaj is the co-founder of Verily and former CEO of Foresite Labs, and has links with Google’s X and Sergey Brin.

Despite just starting out, the company has already hired nearly 100 employees, poaching researchers from competitors like OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta. Those competitors are already well-entrenched in the AI race; however, their model training still largely relies on training models on digital media, but some inroads are being made in physical application AI at places like Google DeepMind. Project Prometheus’ new approach could help to make the company a formidable rival despite its lateness to the scene.

The huge $6.2 billion investment in the company is a significant advantage, as it is expensive to build advanced AI due to high costs for talent and computing power. This is a major commitment of time and money from Bezos, one of the wealthiest people in the world. Despite markets getting worried about an AI bubble, it still remains the hot technology of the decade, with more breakthroughs to be made.

Source: The New York Times