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, according to CNBC.
Prometheus is constructing what it calls an “synthetic normal engineer” — software program able to automating the design and manufacturing of complicated bodily methods, from jet engines to drug compounds.
The ambition is sweeping: change giant swaths of engineering work with AI. Though the startup will automate many features of an engineer’s job, Bezos informed CNBC that the productiveness features 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 few distinguished voices in tech. Whereas some AI leaders predict widespread job losses, Bezos sees it otherwise.
“Vital productiveness within the financial system goes to boost the usual of dwelling,” he stated. “Individuals who immediately have two-earner households, they’ll develop 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 places of work in San Francisco, London, and Zurich, is retaining the specifics of what it has already constructed beneath wraps.
Bezos indicated that a big portion of the capital will go towards the corporate’s giant 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, beneath CEO Andy Jassy, has laid off tens of thousands of individuals as the corporate has accelerated its personal automation push.
At $41 billion, Prometheus is among the most richly valued AI startups ever funded, and one of many largest single bets on the bodily AI sector. However it isn’t the one firm attracting large investor curiosity. In latest months, enterprise capitalists have more and more poured capital into physical 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.
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