After a long time in a "retirement" state, Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon and one of the richest billionaires in the world, is making a strong comeback with an ambitious AI project called Project Prometheus.
According to The New York Times, Bezos will take on the role of co- CEO, along with Vik Bajaj, former leader of Google X.
This startup has raised 6.2 billion USD, becoming one of the most invested early-stage AI startups in the world.
Project Prometheus does not follow the LLM (large language models) trend that has dominated the AI market for the past two years, but aims for a new vision of building a "world model", AI systems capable of learning from the physical world.
Prometheus is named after a famous figure in Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. The Prometheus project is said to aim to build AI systems capable of accelerating scientific discoveries in many fields, from engineering and manufacturing to computers, aerospace and automobiles.
Prometheus has attracted about 100 experts, many recruited from leading AI laboratories such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Meta.
However, most information about the company is still kept confidential, from the location of operations to the internal structure.
Co-leader Vik Bajaj is a famous figure in the technology field. He used to work at Google X, where bold projects such as wing delivery drones or self-driving Waymo were born.
The combination of Bezos's fighting experience and Bajaj's groundbreaking thinking makes the technology world expect a new force in physical AI.
Prometheus is not alone in the race to build a new generation of AI. Many startups such as Periodic Labs or Physical Intelligence are also focusing on models learned from physical data instead of text data. These companies are backed by many large funds, including Bezos.
The foundation of this trend is reinforced by the view of Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist.
LeCun has repeatedly affirmed that LLM is a "manhole" because it only studies from text, does not possess the ability to reason or understand the material world. He believes that intelligence really requires the ability to interact, predict and simulate the world, which is what the world model is aiming for.
This new wave marks an important transformation phase of AI, from text-based machines to physical machines.
With huge resources, team and ambition, Project Prometheus can become a piece that competes directly with Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and leading research laboratories in the race to shape the future of AI.
