The startup is aiming at the physical world with robotics-powered manufacturing that could reshape everything from spacecraft to computer chips.
Amazon’s founder has made his most surprising move yet.
Jeff Bezos has returned to hands-on leadership as co-CEO of Project Prometheus, a secretive AI startup that appeared with an unprecedented $6.2 billion war chest.
This is Bezos’ first operational role since stepping down from Amazon in July 2021, a clear signal that something big is brewing in AI.
The startup is not just another AI company, it is aiming at the physical world with robotics-powered manufacturing that could reshape everything from spacecraft to computer chips.
According to the New York Times, nearly 100 researchers have already been recruited from OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta, and Project Prometheus has assembled an elite AI team before most people even knew it existed.
Prometheus, a Titan from Greek mythology, is known for his intelligence and foresight. But he is also known for stealing fire for humanity and his subsequent eternal punishment.
In the real world, Bezos is not going solo. His co-CEO is physicist Vik Bajaj, a scientific polymath who worked directly with Google co-founder Sergey Brin at the legendary Google X, the Moonshot Factory. Bajaj brings experience from both Google X and Verily, Alphabet’s life sciences division, creating a partnership that mixes Bezos’s empire-building with deep scientific chops.
The duo is chasing something far from the usual parade of chatbots and apps. Project Prometheus aims to create AI systems that learn through physical experimentation. Picture robots running thousands of scientific tests at once, discovering new materials, optimizing manufacturing processes, and cracking engineering challenges that have stalled for decades. Their mission statement puts it plainly: AI for the physical economy.
The company is building physical lab facilities right now and hiring researchers who specialize in real-world AI applications in aerospace, computing hardware, and electric vehicle manufacturing.
The funding tells its own story. Project Prometheus secured $6.2 billion before announcing a single product or generating any revenue, making it one of the most heavily backed early-stage startups in history. A significant portion comes directly from Bezos, a personal bet that this technology will reshape entire industries.
Most AI unicorns raised hundreds of millions at launch, not billions. The scale here suggests investors believe Project Prometheus could speed up discoveries in chemistry and physics while cutting manufacturing costs across multiple sectors. Early applications could include designing next-generation computer chips, optimizing spacecraft components for Bezos’s Blue Origin space venture, and testing materials for extraterrestrial environments. Big targets, fast timelines.
Project Prometheus could kick off a manufacturing shift that makes current automation look quaint. Instead of scripting robots to perform fixed tasks, the company is building AI that learns by doing, runs physical experiments, analyzes results, then iterates at superhuman speed. That approach could accelerate manufacturing efficiency in ways few saw coming.
The timing matters. As AI demand explodes, traditional manufacturing still wrestles with long development cycles and expensive trial-and-error. Project Prometheus aims to compress years of product development into months, while surfacing entirely new approaches to thorny engineering problems.
If they pull it off, competitive dynamics across industries change overnight. Companies could tap AI-designed products that outperform anything built the old way. And the implications stretch beyond Earth, given Bezos’s space ambitions, this tech could be essential for manufacturing in extraterrestrial environments where human oversight is impossible.
Datamation is the leading industry resource for B2B data professionals and technology buyers. Datamation's focus is on providing insight into the latest trends and innovation in AI, data security, big data, and more, along with in-depth product recommendations and comparisons. More than 1.7M users gain insight and guidance from Datamation every year.
Property of TechnologyAdvice. © 2025 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved
Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.
