In November, Jeff Bezos announced that he would become the CEO of a company A new startup called Prometheus. At the time, the startup said “physical AI” — an increasingly common term for applying the same deep learning principles behind large language models or generative artificial intelligence — to things like robotics and manufacturing — but specifics were few. Now, with a big new funding round, Bezos and co-founder Vic Bajaj have spoken a little more about it.
The funding round is significant — after a $6.2 billion seed round last year, it’s now $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation. Funding comes from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and others, as well as a significant amount from Bezos’ treasury. The startup currently employs 150 people.
The majority of this funding will be directed towards the acquisition of computing. “HeOne of the reasons we need to raise significant amounts of funding is that what we do is very computationally intensive, and we need to generate that data.” – Bezos he said CNBC.
But what exactly do they do? Bezos summarized a significant part of the company’s focus as creating an “artificial general engineer.”
“All public wealth is governed by invention” Bezos said The New York Times. “Six thousand years ago someone invented the plow and we all got rich. Then, much later, someone invented the steam engine and we all got rich.” “What Prometheus wants to do is offer a set of tools that dramatically accelerates that innovation cycle,” he said.
