Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and Blue Origin, has launched a startup called Prometheus with over $12 billion in funding. The company aims to develop AI-powered tools that will accelerate the design and manufacturing of complex devices, ranging from computers to jet engines.
Artificial Engineer
Prometheus’s approach is similar to the one used to train chatbots. Just as large language models (LLMs) learned language by analyzing vast amounts of text, these new tools must learn to identify patterns in data from real-world engineering and manufacturing processes.
Bezos described the company’s goal as “a general-purpose artificial engineer.” In his view, it is innovation that drives societal prosperity. “Six thousand years ago, someone invented the plow, and we all became better off. Then someone invented the steam engine, and again, we all became better off,” he said in a comment to the NYT.
Team and Experience
Vik Bajaj, a scientist with a background in physics and chemistry, is a co-founder and co-chair of Prometheus. He worked with Sergey Brin at Google X, the company’s research and development division, and then in 2015 became one of the founders of the Verily research laboratory, part of the Alphabet holding company.
According to Vik Bajaj, it currently takes companies up to ten years to develop and bring a new jet engine into production. A thousand specialists are working together on such projects, using tools that have remained virtually unchanged for decades.
Scope of Ambitions
Prometheus currently has about 150 employees and is valued at $29 billion. Jeff Bezos and are in talks to raise an additional $100 billion for an investment fund to be managed by Prometheus.
The fund will be able to invest in or even acquire companies that can benefit from Prometheus’s technologies. Among the potential beneficiaries, Jeff Bezos specifically mentioned his rocket company, Blue Origin. Its CEO, David Limp, serves on Prometheus’s board of directors.
According to ytimes.com
