Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is returning to the CEO seat – though not at his best-known creation.

Bezos is going to be co-CEO of an AI company called Project Prometheus, marking his first operational role since handing over Amazon’s reins to Andy Jassy in mid-2021. Despite only being revealed to the world in a Monday New York Times article, his new venture can reportedly already boast $6.2 billion in funding.

Unsurprisingly, some of that cash comes from Bezos himself. After all, he is currently the world’s third-richest man, with an estimated net worth of around $245 billion. But the startup’s already-heaving coffers underscore a supercharged funding trend that is integral to fears over an AI bubble.

Back in July, Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab picked up $2 billion in funding at a valuation of $12 billion. The former OpenAI CTO’s operation had not even announced a product at the time, let alone any revenues. Thinking Machines Lab has since released an API for fine-tuning language models, but hasn’t yet started charging for its use. Nonetheless, the startup is reportedly already chasing more funding at a $50 billion valuation.

Safe Superintelligence, co-founded by former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, also took $2 billion in funding earlier this year at a reported valuation of $30 billion. Again, the “safe AI” company has no product or revenues.

Project Prometheus (not to be confused with the nuclear-powered-spacecraft scheme that NASA scrapped two decades ago) will reportedly focus on AI for engineering and manufacturing. One sector it’s targeting is aerospace, hinting at some crossover with Bezos’ rival to SpaceX, Blue Origin.

The NYT report suggests Project Prometheus will focus on building systems that can learn from their observations of and interactions with the physical world. Bezos has form in this area, having participated in a $400 million funding round for AI robotics firm Physical Intelligence a year ago.

The other co-CEO of Project Prometheus is Vik Bajaj, a veteran of Google’s X “moonshot factory” and Alphabet’s life sciences research lab, Verily. Bajaj spent the last seven years leading AI incubator Foresite Labs before joining Project Prometheus. Foresite CTO and chief data scientist Alex Blocker also appears to have come onboard, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Project Prometheus reportedly already has nearly 100 employees, many of whom have been tempted across from the likes of OpenAI and Meta. They will surely hope that the new operation develops a better track record than Bezos’ previous ventures when it comes to how it treats staff.

Blue Origin elicited “toxic” headlines four years ago after disgruntled employees went public with their concerns, and Amazon’s working environment is the stuff of legend.  ®