Jeff Bezos has not been a CEO since 2021, when he left Amazon. Now he is back in the chair.
And it is not Amazon, and not a rocket. It is an AI startup few people can explain, and buyers just put a $41 billion price on it.
Prometheus raised $12 billion in new funding. That puts the firm's worth at about $41 billion.
It only launched in November, with about $6.2 billion to start.
So this jump is fast, even for AI. The backers are a Wall Street who's who.
JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and BlackRock all chipped in. Bezos added his own money on top.
The startup had stayed quiet since it launched, and that silence only made people more curious. A $41 billion price tag tends to draw a crowd.
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Most AI you know writes words or makes images, but Prometheus is different. It wants AI to help build real things.
Bezos calls it an "artificial general engineer." Think of spellcheck, but for a jet engine.
Instead of fixing a sentence, it helps design a part. Bezos says it works like a very modern version of design tools.
The firm sums up its goal in one line: AI for the physical economy. The idea is to speed up how fast people invent new things.
He also shot down one big rumor, saying the firm is not making robots. "We're not being secretive," Bezos said, after months of guessing about his roughly 150-person team.
His co-CEO is Vik Bajaj, a scientist who once helped start a Google lab. The group works out of San Francisco, London and Zurich.
Prometheus now takes up most of his day, and even his rocket firm Blue Origin leans on AI now. He still serves as Amazon's chairman, too.
AI is now the common thread across all of it.
His view on the tech is upbeat, not fearful. He thinks AI will lift how people live.
Some two-income homes may even drop to one paycheck, he said. He also wants "reasonable" rules, the kind that keep AI safe without killing new ideas.
Blue Origin had a rough month, though. One of its rockets blew up during a ground test.
Bezos says the team will fix it and fly again before the year is out. He also plans to watch the SpaceX IPO on Friday, like everyone else.
You cannot buy a piece of Prometheus yet, since the firm is still private.
But smart money tends to show what is coming next. Right now it is racing toward AI that builds real things, not chatbots.
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