Es wird berichtet, dass Jeff Bezos 10 Milliarden US-Dollar finanzieren will und auf physikalisches KI setzt.

According to a Bloomberg report citing the British newspaper Financial Times, the AI startup Project Prometheus, founded by Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, will soon close a new financing round of $1 billion (about 68.2 billion yuan). Its valuation will rise to $38 billion (about 259.16 billion yuan).

People familiar with the matter said that the investors in this round include JPMorgan and BlackRock, among others. The financing is not yet finalized but is expected to be completed soon.

This company was founded by Bezos together with scientist Vik Bajaj. It focuses on AI models that can "understand the physical world" and aims for applications in engineering manufacturing in areas such as aerospace and automotive. According to an earlier report by the New York Times, Project Prometheus received a financing of $620 million (about 42.284 billion yuan) at its founding last year, with Bezos himself being one of the investors.

01. $1 billion financing is imminent, JPMorgan and BlackRock join in

According to people familiar with the matter, as cited by the Financial Times, the financing in this round amounts to about $1 billion (about 68.2 billion yuan), and the valuation is expected to rise to $38 billion (about 259.16 billion yuan). Both JPMorgan and BlackRock are on the list of investors. Together with the first financing round of $620 million (about 42.284 billion yuan), Project Prometheus has developed into one of the best - financed early - stage AI startups globally.

Project Prometheus was founded in 2025. According to the New York Times, this is the first time that Bezos has held an official operating position in a company since he stepped down as CEO of Amazon in July 2021. At his previously founded space company Blue Origin, he only held the title of "Founder".

The other co - CEO is physicist and chemist Bajaj. He previously worked at Google X with Sergey Brin, the co - founder of Google, and was involved in the later autonomous driving project Waymo. He also founded the life sciences lab Verily under Alphabet and the AI startup incubator Foresite Labs and served as CEO there. Last year, he left Foresite Labs to fully focus on Project Prometheus.

Bajaj, co - CEO of Project Prometheus (Source: X)

02. Let AI learn from the physical world, the core members of the team mainly come from leading AI companies

According to people familiar with the matter, as cited by the New York Times in November 2025, Project Prometheus had recruited nearly 100 employees at that time, including several core researchers from leading AI companies such as OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta. Assembling a team with both knowledge of modern models and engineering manufacturing was one of the direct purposes of the first financing round of $620 million.

In terms of the technical route, Project Prometheus differs greatly from the currently dominant large - language - model route. The New York Times has pointed out that large language models like ChatGPT learn by analyzing a huge amount of text to imitate the way humans organize language and can then write code and solve mathematical problems. However, Project Prometheus takes a different path: It lets AI learn from mistakes in the physical world to serve engineering manufacturing in areas such as computer hardware, aerospace, and automotive. This path is also directly related to Bezos' long - term investments in the space sector.

Project Prometheus is not alone in the wave of physical AI. In 2025, a group of researchers who had left large companies such as Meta, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind founded Periodic Labs. This company has already received a financing of $300 million (about 2.046 billion yuan) and plans to build its own laboratory in Northern California to use robots to conduct large - scale scientific experiments so that the AI system can autonomously collect experience through physical failures.

In addition, both Fei - Fei Li's World Labs and AMI Labs led by Turing Award winner Yann LeCun are taking the "world - model" route to teach AI to understand the real physical world through videos. According to people familiar with the matter, Project Prometheus' system is different from world models and is more focused on simulation and understanding in engineering manufacturing. Regarding Bezos personally, he invested in a startup named Physical Intelligence in 2024, which applies AI in robotics. The founding of Project Prometheus is a systematic strengthening of his investments in the direction of physical AI.

03. Conclusion: The capital market bets on physical AI

After this round of financing, Project Prometheus' valuation will rise to $38 billion, which means a significant increase in valuation. On the one hand, mainstream financial institutions like JPMorgan and BlackRock are betting on this company; on the other hand, Bezos himself also has an influence. This shows that the capital market has high expectations for physical AI.

At the same time, Project Prometheus, World Labs, AMI Labs, and Physical Intelligence, which take different paths, are successively entering the competition. The competition in the physical AI and world - model markets will intensify, and the race for top talents and computing power will become even fiercer in the future.

This article is from the WeChat account "Zhidongxi" (ID: zhidxcom). The author is Yang Jingli, and the editor is Li Shuiqing. The article was published by 36Kr with permission.