Jeff Bezos's Project Prometheus AI lab closes $10 billion round at $38 billion valuation

Bezos's Physical AI Lab Has Closed Round at $38 Billion Value

Project Prometheus, the artificial intelligence lab that Amazon.com Inc. founder Jeff Bezos is leading with Google veteran Vik Bajaj, has closed a $10 billion funding round that values the company at roughly $38 billion, according to a person familiar with the situation. JPMorgan Chase & Co. and BlackRock Inc. are among the firms participating in the round, but there is no lead investor, the person said, asking not to be identified because the information isn't yet public. The lab, which is focused on developing AI models and tools that help engineer and manufacture physical products, may announce investors in the round in the coming months, the person said. In an unusual move for an AI startup, Project Prometheus has intentionally targeted non-Silicon Valley investors such as private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds that have deep exposure to physical industries such as manufacturing. The only Silicon Valley-type firms that the lab counts among its investors are DST Global and ARCH Venture Partners, according to the person familiar with the matter. JPMorgan declined to comment. A representative for BlackRock declined to comment. The Financial Times had previously reported that Project Prometheus was nearing completion of the funding round. The lab has held talks with sovereign wealth funds in regions including the Middle East and Singapore, the person said. Bezos and Bajaj, who are co-chief executive officers of the startup, have been meeting with potential investors jointly, the person said, with Bezos offering the vision and ambitions and Bajaj laying out the plans for how the lab will achieve them. Bezos is heavily involved as co-CEO, the person said, adding that he and Bajaj have multiple conversations a day. In assuming a leadership role at the lab, Bezos returned to a formal executive post for the first time since stepping down from Amazon in 2021. Project Prometheus is also seeking to raise tens of billions dollars -- if not more -- for a holding company that plans to buy firms outright that it sees as benefitting from the technologies the lab is developing, the person said. Much like Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company would own the companies it acquires for decades and would target complementary businesses such as those in casting and ones that handle specialized manufacturing. The lab is still contemplating its initial products, with plans to both sell technology that helps manufacturers design and build physical products and manufacture physical products itself. The company currently employs hundreds of people, with the most working out of San Francisco and some in London and Zurich. The startup has already raised billions of dollars in funding, sourced in part from Bezos himself, and has attracted employees from leading AI labs like OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

Jeff Bezos's AI lab nears $38bn valuation in funding deal

Jeff Bezos is close to a $10bn fundraising deal from investors at a $38bn valuation for his lab, which is focused on AI that can understand the physical world and transform engineering and manufacturing. The company, code-named Project Prometheus, is planning to imminently close a funding round at a valuation of $38bn, including the new money, according to people familiar with the deal. The agreement, which would make the company one of the best-financed early-stage start-ups globally, includes an initial $6.2bn raised in November but has been extended because of demand, the people added. Bezos is among the initial investors. The Amazon founder's AI venture marks the first time he has served in an operational role since stepping down as chief executive of the ecommerce giant in 2021. The new funding is separate from a holding company that Prometheus is also raising tens of billions of dollars for, which aims to acquire equity stakes in businesses that it anticipates will be disrupted by the technology it is building, as previously reported by the FT. This could include engineering, architecture and design companies. The investment holding company would have access to data from its portfolio businesses to train Prometheus's AI systems. Bezos and co-chief executive Vikram Bajaj have been leading both fundraising efforts. JPMorgan and BlackRock are among the investors in the new round, said a person familiar with the matter. The round is expected to close soon but has not been finalised. Prometheus, BlackRock and JPMorgan declined to comment. The company -- based in San Francisco, with offices in London and Zurich -- is working on AI systems that understand the laws of physics and can be applied across physical industries. It aims to use specialist models to speed up manual processes and make them less resource-intensive. It has hired hundreds of staff to support efforts, including AI scientists, experts in specific industries and people who have experience building out computing infrastructure. Earlier this month, the FT reported that the company had poached Kyle Kosic, a former OpenAI employee and xAI co-founder, to work on infrastructure projects. Kosic had previously led efforts at Elon Musk's AI start-up to build its Colossus supercomputer.

Jeff Bezos' AI lab nears $38 billion valuation in funding deal, FT reports

April 20 (Reuters) - Jeff Bezos' artificial intelligence lab is close to raising $10 billion in a new funding round, valuing the new startup called Project Prometheus at $38 billion, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing sources. The fundraising comes amid strong investor enthusiasm for AI ⁠companies as heavy technology spending reshapes businesses across sectors. Reporting by Carlos Méndez in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Jeff Bezos' physical AI lab is close to raising $10 billion

Project Prometheus, launched in November 2025 with $6.2 billion in initial funding, is developing AI systems that understand the physical world, targeting engineering, manufacturing, aerospace, robotics, and drug discovery. The round has not yet closed. Jeff Bezos is close to finalising a $10 billion funding round for his AI laboratory at a $38 billion valuation, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the deal. The startup, known internally as Project Prometheus, has attracted JPMorgan and BlackRock as investors in the new round. However, the fundraising had not yet been finalised at the time of publication. BlackRock declined to comment. Project Prometheus launched in November 2025 with $6.2 billion in initial funding. It is focused on what the AI industry calls "physical AI", systems that learn through interaction with the real world and understand the laws of physics, rather than learning from text and images alone. The lab's stated targets include engineering, manufacturing, aerospace, robotics, drug discovery, and logistics automation. It is led by chief executive Vikram Bajaj, a former Google X scientist and co-founder of Foresite Labs, and has grown to over 120 employees drawn from leading AI companies including OpenAI, xAI, Meta, and DeepMind. Bezos is described as among the initial investors in the venture and has been leading the fundraising effort alongside Bajaj. The $38 billion valuation, if confirmed, would make Prometheus one of the most richly valued early-stage AI startups in the world. For context, the deal would come just days after Amazon, the company Bezos founded, committed up to $25 billion in new investment to Anthropic and secured a $100 billion cloud spending pledge in return. The parallel underscores how dramatically the scale of AI infrastructure deals has shifted: Prometheus, at $10 billion, is raising more in a single round than most AI companies have raised in their entire history. Physical AI is conceptually distinct from the large language models that have dominated the AI investment cycle since 2022. LLMs are trained on publicly available text, images, and code, data that is abundant and relatively cheap. Physical AI systems require specialised data on material behaviour, engineering tolerances, manufacturing processes, and real-world physics, much of which is proprietary and hard to collect at scale. That scarcity creates both a barrier to entry and a potential long-term advantage for companies that can accumulate it, which may partly explain why Prometheus attracted institutional investors of BlackRock and JPMorgan's scale even at an early stage. This venture marks the first time Bezos has held an operational role in a technology company since leaving Amazon in 2021. It also signals a broad ambition to apply AI directly to the physical industries, manufacturing, aerospace, construction, logistics, that LLMs have so far touched only superficially. Whether Prometheus will achieve that ambition is an open question; the lab is still in its early phase and has not publicly demonstrated products or commercial deployments.

Jeff Bezos' Secretive AI Startup Just Hit a $38 Billion Valuation

Jeff Bezos has been quietly building his next business venture, and investors are already betting big. His stealth AI startup, Project Prometheus, has reached a roughly $38 billion valuation as it works to raise $10 billion in new funding, according to Business Insider. The round -- its first since a $6.2 billion launch financing last year -- is still in progress, with terms subject to change. JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock are among the investors involved, Reuters reported. Bezos has also held early talks with investors in the Middle East and Southeast Asia about raising as much as $100 billion for a fund that would acquire or back companies positioned to benefit from Project Prometheus's technology, The New York Times reported. Bezos co-founded Project Prometheus in November alongside Vik Bajaj, a former Google X leader and current Stanford adjunct professor. Unlike many of today's AI companies, which are focused on chatbots and software, Prometheus is targeting what's known as physical AI. These are systems designed to interact with the real world, according to Business Insider.

Jeff Bezos' AI lab nears $38 billion valuation in funding deal: FT - The Economic Times

Jeff Bezos' AI lab, Project Prometheus, is reportedly nearing a $10 billion funding round, valuing the startup at $38 billion. Investors like JPMorgan and BlackRock are participating in this significant venture. The company is focused on developing AI for engineering and manufacturing across various industries.Jeff Bezos' artificial intelligence lab is close to raising $10 billion in a new funding round, valuing the new startup called Project Prometheus at $38 billion, the Financial Times reported ⁠on ⁠Monday, citing sources. The fundraising comes amid strong investor enthusiasm for AI companies as heavy technology spending reshapes businesses across sectors. JPMorgan and BlackRock are among the investors in the new round, ⁠the newspaper said, adding that the fundraising was expected to close soon ⁠but had not been finalised. The startup is focused on AI for engineering and manufacturing computers, automobiles and spacecraft, according to media reports. Amazon.com founder Bezos is among the initial investors in the venture and has been leading the fundraising effort alongside co-chief executive Vikram Bajaj, the report ⁠said. BlackRock declined to comment. JPMorgan and the project's co-founders, Sherjil Ozair and William Guss, did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment. Bezos could not be reached for comment.

Bezos Targets $38 Billion Valuation for Physical AI Lab | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. That's according to a report late Monday (April 20) from the Financial Times (FT), which cites sources familiar with the deal who say the funding would value the company at $38 billion. The company, which has the code name "Project Prometheus," is focused on artificial intelligence (AI) models that simulate the behavior of things in the physical world, a field otherwise known as "physical AI." The FT says this agreement would make the company one of the best-financed early stage startups in the world. Sources said the new agreement includes an initial $6.2 billion raised in November but has been extended due to demand. According to the report, the new funding is separate from a holding company for which Prometheus is also raising tens of billions of dollars. The goal of that effort is to acquire equity stakes in companies it believes will be disrupted by Prometheus' technology, such as engineering, design and architecture firms. Writing about this effort last month, PYMNTS argued that Bezos' plan was more noteworthy for its timing than for its scale. "The proposal arrives at a moment when industrial capacity, geopolitical priorities and technological capability are converging in ways not seen in generations," that report said. "Bezos's strategy appears to rest on the belief that these capabilities have reached a tipping point. Rather than building new factories, the plan centers on acquiring existing ones and upgrading them by using AI to extract more output, reduce downtime and lower costs. It is a bet on AI as infrastructure." If the strategy picks up steam, the report added, it is likely its effects will stretch beyond the company directly involved. Rivals might have to adopt similar technologies to remain viable. Suppliers will need to connect to more advanced systems. Investors may focus on companies that can show an ability to modernize. "The risk, of course, is that manufacturing environments are far more complex and less standardized than digital systems. Integrating AI into legacy operations at scale could challenge the limits of applying software-centric thinking to complex, capital-intensive environments. Project Prometheus is part of a wave of startups focusing on applying AI AI to physical tasks such as robotics or drug design.