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Prometheus, the physical AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj, the former co-founder of Verily, Google\u2019s life sciences unit, announced it raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation.<\/p>\n
The new funds came from Bezos himself, as well as from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock, among others.<\/p>\n
This is the second fundraise round for Prometheus, which launched late last year with an initial raise of $6.2 billion, according to CNBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n Prometheus is building what it calls an \u201cartificial general engineer\u201d \u2014 software capable of automating the design and manufacturing of complex physical systems, from jet engines to drug compounds.<\/p>\n The ambition is sweeping: replace large swaths of engineering work with AI. Although the startup will automate many aspects of an engineer\u2019s job, Bezos told CNBC that the productivity gains AI delivers will lead to what he calls \u201clabor scarcity\u201d \u2014 his term for a world where demand for human workers outpaces supply.<\/p>\n That puts him at odds with a number of prominent voices in tech. While some AI leaders predict widespread job losses, Bezos sees it differently.<\/p>\n \u201cSignificant productivity in the economy is going to raise the standard of living,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople who today have two-earner households, they\u2019ll become one-earner households. Maybe some people who are working overtime will stop working overtime.\u201d<\/p>\n The company, which currently has 150 employees across offices in San Francisco, London, and Zurich, is keeping the specifics of what it has already built under wraps.<\/p>\n Bezos indicated that a large portion of the capital will go toward the company\u2019s large compute needs.<\/p>\n Bezos knows something about labor at scale. Amazon \u2014 where he serves as executive chairman and is the largest individual shareholder \u2014 employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide and over the past year, under CEO Andy Jassy, has laid off tens of thousands<\/a> of people as the company has accelerated its own automation push.<\/p>\n At $41 billion, Prometheus is one of the most richly valued AI startups ever funded, and one of the largest single bets on the physical AI sector. But it isn\u2019t the only company attracting massive investor interest. In recent months, venture capitalists have increasingly poured capital into physical AI<\/a>, a booming sector that investors and founders argue is inherently more defensible than pure software \u2014 because the physical world creates moats that code alone cannot.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n