Jeff Bezos is back

After leaving Amazon, Jeff Bezos returned with Project Prometheus, a startup developing AI to produce computers, cars and spacecraft.

Billionaire Jeff Bezos. Photo: New York Times .

According to the New York Times , Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezos is building Project Prometheus, an AI startup focused on engineering and manufacturing computers, cars, and spacecraft.

With an initial capital of 6.2 billion USD (partly from Bezos), this is one of the most funded startups today.

Bezos joins Prometheus as co-CEO, his first official executive role since stepping down from Amazon in July 2021. Although he joins the space company Blue Origin, his official title there is founder.

Jeff Bezos' new project

Since leaving Amazon, Bezos’s personal life and business have been in the public eye. Earlier this year, he and Lauren Sánchez held a lavish wedding in Venice, Italy, with many celebrities in attendance. Bezos has also focused on Blue Origin and the AI ​​trend.

Project Prometheus joins a competitive AI field where small companies are trying to carve out a niche to take on big players like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, alongside pioneers like OpenAI and Anthropic.

Little is known about Project Prometheus, and it is not even clear when it was founded. Rumors say the project is focused on developing technology to serve Bezos's interest in sending humans into space.

Jeff Bezos focuses on space company Blue Origin after leaving Amazon. Photo: Blue Origin .

Project Prometheus will focus on building AI for engineering and manufacturing in areas such as computers, cars and aerospace. It is not yet clear where the startup will be headquartered.

In addition to Bezos, the other co-founder and co-CEO of Project Prometheus is Dr. Vik Bajaj. He is a physicist and chemist who worked with Sergey Brin (a co-founder of Google) at Google X, which created ambitious projects such as a drone delivery service and a self-driving car called Wing, which later became Waymo.

In 2015, Dr. Bajaj co-founded Verily, a life sciences research lab operated by Alphabet (Google’s parent company). Three years later, he co-founded and served as CEO of Foresite Labs, which invests in AI and data science startups.

According to sources, Bajaj has left his job at Foresite Labs to focus on building Project Prometheus with Jeff Bezos.

How does Project Prometheus help society?

Project Prometheus is part of a wave of companies applying AI to physical projects like robotics, drug research and science.

Previously, several prominent researchers left Meta, OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and other major projects to form Periodic Labs, which focuses on building AI for physics and chemistry. Last year, Bezos invested in Physical Intelligence, a startup that applies AI to robots.

The $6.2 billion funding could give Project Prometheus an edge in the costly race to build AI. By comparison, Thinking Machines Lab, founded by a group of former OpenAI employees, raised $2 billion this year.

According to the New York Times , Project Prometheus has recruited nearly 100 employees, including researchers at major companies like OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta.

It's not just independent labs or startups, a number of companies like OpenAI, Google and Meta are researching AI technology to help speed up work in fields like physical sciences.

Previously, two DeepMind researchers won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold, a project that promises to support tasks such as drug research.

The AI ​​project is Jeff Bezos' latest ambition. Photo: Bloomberg .

Many leaders and experts in the AI ​​field predict that large language models (the systems behind chatbots like ChatGPT or Gemini) will soon achieve significant scientific achievements.

OpenAI and Meta emphasize that their technology is close to that goal in areas like mathematics and theoretical physics, while Periodic Labs or Project Prometheus wants to build AI models that can learn in a more complex way than chatbots.

How it works: Large language models learn by analyzing large amounts of text. Using data samples from Wikipedia articles, newspapers, and information collected from the internet, the system uses probability to predict how words should be put together in a way that sounds like a human would. They can even write code or solve math problems.

By comparison, startups are focusing on training AI from the physical world . With $300 million in funding, Periodic Labs plans to build a lab in North Carolina (USA) where robots will perform large-scale scientific experiments.

In theory, by analyzing physics experiments, AI systems could learn from mistakes, absorb information, and perfect most scientific experiments. That's the approach Project Prometheus plans to take.

Source: https://znews.vn/du-an-moi-cua-jeff-bezos-post1603797.html