Jeff Bezos’s Prometheus raises $12B to build an ‘artificial general engineer’ for the physical world

Prometheus, the bodily AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj, the previous co-founder of Verily, Google’s life sciences unit, introduced it raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation.

The brand new funds got here from Bezos himself, in addition to from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock, amongst others.

That is the second fundraise spherical for Prometheus, which launched late final yr with an preliminary increase of $6.2 billion, in keeping with CNBC.

Prometheus is constructing what it calls an “synthetic basic engineer” — software program able to automating the design and manufacturing of complicated bodily programs, from jet engines to drug compounds.

The ambition is sweeping: change massive swaths of engineering work with AI. Though the startup will automate many facets of an engineer’s job, Bezos informed CNBC that the productiveness positive factors AI delivers will result in what he calls “labor shortage” — his time period for a world the place demand for human staff outpaces provide.

That places him at odds with quite a lot of distinguished voices in tech. Whereas some AI leaders predict widespread job losses, Bezos sees it in a different way.

“Important productiveness within the economic system goes to lift the usual of dwelling,” he mentioned. “Individuals who right this moment have two-earner households, they’ll turn into one-earner households. Possibly some people who find themselves working additional time will cease working additional time.”

The corporate, which at present has 150 staff throughout workplaces in San Francisco, London, and Zurich, is retaining the specifics of what it has already constructed below wraps.

Bezos indicated that a big portion of the capital will go towards the corporate’s massive compute wants.

Bezos is aware of one thing about labor at scale. Amazon — the place he serves as government chairman and is the most important particular person shareholder — employs greater than 1.5 million individuals worldwide and over the previous yr, below CEO Andy Jassy, has laid off tens of 1000’s of individuals as the corporate has accelerated its personal automation push.

At $41 billion, Prometheus is likely one of the most richly valued AI startups ever funded, and one of many largest single bets on the bodily AI sector. Nevertheless it isn’t the one firm attracting large investor curiosity. In latest months, enterprise capitalists have more and more poured capital into bodily AI, a booming sector that traders and founders argue is inherently extra defensible than pure software program — as a result of the bodily world creates moats that code alone can’t.