Prometheus, the physics AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj, former co-founder of Google’s life sciences division Verily, announced it has raised $12 billion at a valuation of $41 billion.
The new funding came from Bezos himself, as well as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock and others.
This is Prometheus’ second round of funding, which started late last year, with the first raising $6.2 billion, according to CNBC.
Prometheus is building what it calls “artificial general engineers,” software that can automate the design and manufacturing of complex physical systems, from jet engines to pharmaceutical compounds.
The ambitions are far-reaching. This means replacing much of the engineering work with AI. Although the startup automates many aspects of engineers’ jobs, Bezos told CNBC that the productivity gains brought about by AI will lead to what he calls a “labor shortage,” a term used to describe a world in which the demand for human workers exceeds the supply.
That puts him at odds with many prominent voices in the technology industry. While some AI leaders predict widespread job losses, Bezos sees it differently.
“If the productivity of the economy increases significantly, the standard of living will also improve,” he said. “Currently, people in dual-income households will become single-earner households. Some people who work overtime may stop working overtime.”
The company currently has 150 employees in offices in San Francisco, London, and Zurich, but details of what it has already built are being kept secret.
Bezos indicated that the majority of the capital will go toward the company’s large-scale computing needs.
Mr. Bezos knows something about labor at scale. Amazon, of which he is executive chairman and largest individual shareholder, employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide and has laid off tens of thousands of people over the past year under CEO Andy Jassy as the company accelerates its own automation drive.
At $41 billion, Prometheus is one of the most expensive AI startups ever funded and one of the largest single investments in the physical AI sector. However, the company is not the only company attracting significant investor interest. In recent months, venture capitalists have been pouring more and more capital into physical AI. Investors and founders argue that this fast-growing field is inherently more defensible than pure software. This is because the physical world creates a moat that cannot be created by code alone.
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