AI startup Prometheus announced on June 12 that it has completed a $12 billion Series B funding round, valuing the company at about $41 billion; investors include JPMorgan, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, DST Global, and Arch Venture Partners. Jeff Bezos serves as co-CEO, his first CEO role since stepping down from Amazon in 2021.
Confirmed details of the Series B funding and valuation
According to reports by GeekWire and Axios, the confirmation details of this round are as follows:
Funding amount: $12 billion
Post-money valuation: about $41 billion
Investors: JPMorgan, BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, DST Global, Arch Venture Partners
Previous round: A Series funding of $6.2 billion, with Bezos as the largest backer; Bezos also confirmed that he participated in this Series B round
In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber at its San Francisco headquarters, Bezos said: “This is a capital-intensive startup, and there’s no question about that,” and discussed the company’s computing costs and the cost of building specialized training data. When asked whether it is considering an IPO, Bezos said: “It’s too early to consider this question right now.”
Prometheus business definition: General AI engineers and a manufacturing acquisition plan
Co-CEO Vik Bajaj explained using a jet engine as an example that designing, producing prototypes, and manufacturing jet engines require an engineering team spending 10 years or more. He said: “The change in recent years is that we can now treat these complex problems—from design to manufacturing—as an end-to-end artificial intelligence problem.”
Bezos confirmed in the interview that Prometheus may acquire parts of businesses that could benefit from its technology, helping improve their production processes; he responded to earlier reports that its affiliated funds are seeking to raise as much as $100 billion to acquire manufacturing companies.
Bezos’s confirmation and the backdrop of Blue Origin’s current situation
Bezos confirmed that he joined the company by end of 2024 as a founding investor, and since then decided to serve as CEO full-time: “The momentum and potential of the company impressed me deeply. I realized I couldn’t just stand by anymore—I had to go all in.”
Regarding Blue Origin, Bezos said that last month’s New Glenn rocket explosion during a launchpad test at Cape Canaveral in Florida was “a very bad day,” and that the company is currently rebuilding the launch site. He said the longest piece of equipment on the launchpad was not damaged, and the plan is to “resume flights by the end of this year.” When asked about the IPO that SpaceX is expected to conduct, Bezos said: “I’ll be watching along with everyone else.”
FAQ
Is this Jeff Bezos’s first time serving as CEO at an AI company? Yes. According to reports, this is Bezos’s first CEO role since stepping down as CEO at Amazon in 2021. He joined Prometheus by end of 2024 as a founding investor, and only afterward decided to take on the co-CEO role full-time.
What exactly does Prometheus’s “general AI engineer” refer to? Based on what Bezos and Bajaj explained in their CNBC interview, a “general AI engineer” refers to a system that can treat complex physical engineering problems—from design to manufacturing—as an end-to-end AI problem, with the goal of accelerating development of physical items such as bridges, chips, and jet engines, compressing cycles that traditionally would take engineering teams more than 10 years to complete.
When will Prometheus’s product be formally launched? Based on the confirmations made by Bezos and Bajaj in their interviews, the two co-CEOs declined to disclose a specific product rollout timeline, saying only that “an early version is coming soon.”
