Jeff Bezos has launched an artificial intelligence startup called Project Prometheus, the New York Times reported today.

The company is reportedly backed by $6.2 billion in funding from Bezos and other investors. It’s unclear whom those other investors are, when Project Prometheus was founded or where it’s headquartered. However, the Times’ sources did divulge certain other details about the company.

Project Prometheus is said to be jointly led by Bezos and serial entrepreneur Vik Bajaj, who both hold the title of co-chief executive officer. Bajaj is a scientist and entrepreneur who co-founded Alphabet’s Verily healthcare unit in 2015. He went on to launch a life sciences startup incubator called Foresite Labs and Xaira Therapeutics Inc., a company that is using AI to speed up drug discovery.

Bajaj reportedly left Foresite Labs “recently” to focus on Project Prometheus. Besides Bajaj and Bezos, the startup’s team reportedly also includes about 100 employees. According to the Times, some of those employees are AI researchers poached from OpenAI Group PBC, Meta Platforms Inc. and Google DeepMind.

Project Prometheus has reportedly stated that it’s developing “AI for the physical economy.” The Times’ sources elaborated that the company is training AI models optimized to “help in engineering and manufacturing.” The development effort is focused on use cases in the aerospace, automobile and information technology markets.

The Times’ sources said that Project Prometheus is taking a similar approach with its AI as Periodic Labs Inc., a venture-backed materials science startup. The latter company is using AI-powered robots to synthesize compounds. Furthermore, Periodic Labs intends to harness the data produced during its experiments to train AI models that can speed up material discovery.

It’s unclear whether Project Prometheus will likewise make discovering new materials a focus of its AI research. One of Period Labs’ goals is to develop superconductors that can operate at higher temperatures. Such superconductors, which would make it possible to develop more power-efficient electronics, could have numerous applications in the markets where Project Prometheus reportedly plans to compete.

Project Prometheus’ focus on the aerospace sector raises the possibility it may seek to collaborate with Bezos’ other venture, Blue Origin LLC. The latter company, which is developing reusable rockets, could benefit from AI tools capable of speeding up engineering tasks. Last week, the booster stage of a Blue Origin successfully returned to Earth for the first time.

The SpaceX Corp. competitor is already using AI to automate some manual work. Securing regulatory approval for a space launch involves processing thousands of pages worth of technical documentation. In an August blog post, Amazon Web Services Inc. detailed that Blue Origin is using large language models hosted on its Amazon Bedrock service to speed up the workflow.

There are many other engineering-related use cases to which Project Prometheus could seek to apply its AI. Autodesk Inc., for example, has developed neural networks that automatically generate new variations of an existing component design. Engineers can customize details such as the materials those variants should incorporate.

Startups are using AI to streamline not only component design but also the subsequent manufacturing phase. CaDDi Inc., which raised funding in March, has developed an AI platform that can analyze a component’s blueprints and automatically identify suppliers capable of producing it.

Project Prometheus’ entry into the AI market could prompt rivals such as OpenAI to increase their focus on the engineering automation segment. It’s believed the latter company has already started taking steps in that direction. In September, Wired reported that OpenAI is recruiting researchers to a team that is developing AI models for robots.

Photo: Unsplash