Jeff Bezos has invested $12 billion in his startup Prometheus, which announced a funding round valuing the company at $41 billion—making it one of the most richly valued AI startups ever.
JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock are backing the round, alongside Bezos. This is Prometheus's second funding round; it raised $6.2 billion last year. The startup, co-founded with Vik Bajaj, former co-founder of Google's life sciences unit Verily, is building what it calls an "artificial general engineer."
The software designs and manufactures complex physical systems—jet engines, drug compounds, and similar products. The goal is to automate large portions of engineering work with AI.
Bezos told CNBC he sees AI-driven productivity creating "labor scarcity," where demand for workers exceeds supply. "Significant productivity in the economy is going to raise the standard of living," he said. He suggested people could shift from two-income households to one. This view contrasts with other tech leaders who predict mass job losses.
The 150-person team, with offices in San Francisco, London, and Zurich, has not disclosed details of its current capabilities. Much of the capital will go toward compute costs.
Bezos has experience at scale. Amazon, where he is executive chairman and largest shareholder, employs over 1.5 million people worldwide. Under CEO Andy Jassy, the company has pursued automation-driven workforce reductions.
Physical AI is attracting investor capital. The sector is seen as more defensible than pure software because physical systems create barriers that code alone cannot. At $41 billion, Prometheus is the sector leader by valuation.
