Jeff Bezos is pitching a new kind of AI race: one built around physical invention.
Prometheus, the AI startup Bezos co-founded with former Google executive Vik Bajaj, announced Thursday it has raised $12 billion in a Series B round, pushing its valuation to $41 billion. The company launched late last year with $6.2 billion in initial funding, and until now, its founders had said almost nothing publicly about what they were building.
That changed Thursday, when Bezos and Bajaj offered their clearest explanation yet of what Prometheus is trying to build.
While much of the AI industry focuses on creating artificial general intelligence, Prometheus pursues a different goal. The startup wants to create what Bezos calls an "artificial general engineer," AI systems designed to help engineers develop and manufacture physical products more efficiently.
"The cycle from dream, to manufacturing at rate, to having it out in the world can be very long," Bezos told Axios. "So what we're doing is building a set of tools that will empower engineers to compress that cycle time and make that dream-build loop be 10 times faster or even more."
Focused on human productivity, not replacing engineers
Questions remain about whether such technology could eventually replace engineering jobs. Bezos and Bajaj pushed back against that idea during multiple interviews, arguing that better tools would increase innovation rather than reduce the need for human talent.
"The pace of our physical creation right now is nowhere near the pace of human imagination," Bajaj told Axios. "If we can make it just a little bit easier, or hopefully a lot easier, to bring to life what people dream of there's going to be a lot more invention and a lot more people involved in it."
Speaking to CNBC, Bezos argued that AI-driven productivity gains could ultimately increase demand for workers rather than eliminate jobs. "Significant productivity in the economy is going to raise the standard of living," he said.
Billions will go toward computing power
Although Prometheus remains secretive about its products and technical approach, Bezos revealed that a significant portion of the newly raised capital will be used to fund computing infrastructure.
"That is a big chunk of the funding we've raised," Bezos told CNBC. "And one of the reasons we've had to raise a significant amount of funding is because ... what we're doing is very compute intensive and we need to, you know, create that data."
The company has declined to explain how its AI systems are being trained, noting only that there is no readily available "Internet of manufacturing data" that can simply be absorbed by AI models, according to Axios.
Bezos also acknowledged that it is still "premature" to discuss Prometheus' achievements in detail, though he told CNBC that what the company has accomplished so far is "really quite remarkable."
Prometheus is targeting industries where product development can take years or even decades. Bezos pointed to jet engines as an example, telling Axios that achieving a relatively modest performance improvement can become a years-long engineering effort due to the complexity involved.
The company says its technology could eventually help accelerate the design and manufacturing of products ranging from medical devices and consumer electronics to spacecraft and industrial machinery.
Bezos weighs in on AI regulation
During his CNBC appearance, Bezos also addressed growing concerns about AI regulation. Using a comparison to everyday tools, he argued that policymakers should focus on how AI is used rather than restricting the underlying technology itself.
"You don't want to accidentally outlaw the knife because it can be used in a bad way," Bezos said.
"Knives are important tools and yes, every once and a while they get misused by someone. But the solution to that isn’t to say, ‘OK, no more data centers. No more knives.’ That’s not a smart approach to regulation," CNBC reported.
At the same time, Bezos said government oversight can play an important role in ensuring safety.
"There's lots to be said for healthy government regulation to improve safety and products and so on," he said.
Also read: While Prometheus focuses on engineering productivity, Bezos has also pushed back on AI job-loss fears.