 "Who is Vik Bajaj, co-founder of Jeff Bezos’s AI startup Project Prometheus?")
Amazon’s former CEO, Jeff Bezos, has ventured into a new start-up. The billionaire has launched an artificial intelligence (AI) startup, Project Prometheus.
Bezos has appointed himself as the co-chief executive of the company. Vikram “Vik” Bajaj has joined as his co-founder and co-CEO.
Let’s take a closer look.
Who is Vik Bajaj?
Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist, is also a celebrity tech executive. He has a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Bajaj earned his Bachelor’s and and Master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.
He has worked with Google’s experimental moonshot factory, X. In 2015, Bajaj co-founded Verily, a research lab dedicated to the life sciences, an Alphabet-owned venture.
He is also the co-founder of Foresite Labs, an AI-focused affiliate of investment firm Foresite Capital.
According to New York Times (NYT), he recently left as chief executive of Foresite Labs to join Project Prometheus.
Bajaj also held various academic appointments at the Stanford School of Medicine, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley.
What’s Project Prometheus?
Project Prometheus, an AI startup, will centre on technology to help in engineering and manufacturing in several fields, including computers, aerospace and automobiles, as per the NYT report.
It remains unclear when the company was launched or where it will be based.
However, the startup has already hired roughly 100 employees, including researchers, poaching from top AI companies such as OpenAI, DeepMind and Meta, three people familiar with the company told NYT on the condition of anonymity.
It will focus on applying AI to physical tasks, including robotics, drug design and scientific discovery. Project Prometheus is focused on “AI for the physical economy,” as per its LinkedIn page.
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View AllThe company has already received $6.2 billion in funding, partly from Bezos himself. This makes it one of the best-financed early-stage AI startups in the world.
Bezos’ company has joined a crowded AI market, with smaller firms trying to compete with industry giants like Google, Meta and Microsoft, as well as pioneers like OpenAI.
As per NYT, the new AI startup’s work will be similar to Periodic Labs, which is developing technology to accelerate scientific research in areas like physics and chemistry. The company, which has raised $300 million in funding, aims to train robots to run scientific experiments on a large scale.
Bezos returns as CEO
Jeff Bezos has returned as the chief executive four years after stepping down as Amazon’s CEO. This is his first formal role since then.
The co-CEO of Project Prometheus was until now majorly involved with his aerospace company Blue Origin as its founder and sole shareholder.
Since exiting as Amazon’s CEO, Bezos has made big investments in AI, backing the startup Perplexity, the humanoid-robot maker Figure AI, AI data-labelling firm Toloka, and KoBold Metals, which uses machine learning to search for critical minerals, as per TechCrunch.
Last year, Bezos invested in Physical Intelligence, a startup applying AI to robots.
He grabbed the headlines earlier this year for his star-studded wedding to journalist Lauren Sánchez in Venice.
With inputs from agencies
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