Amazon founder Jeff Bezos back in CEO role with $8 billion AI start-up

NEW YORK -  Amazon founder and former chief executive Jeff Bezos honed his leadership philosophy running one of the world’s largest companies. Now, he is bringing his management skills to an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up with fewer than 100 employees.

Project Prometheus, which Mr Bezos co-founded with scientist Vik Bajaj, will use AI to accelerate engineering and manufacturing in fields like aerospace and cars, The New York Times reported.

The start-up has US$6.2 billion (S$8 billion) in funding, sourced in part from Mr Bezos himself, and employees counted in the dozens, some of whom were poached from leading AI labs like OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

As co-CEO with Mr Bajaj, Mr Bezos is back in a formal executive post for the first time since stepping down from Amazon in 2021.

The billionaire has since devoted time to his aerospace company, Blue Origin, and made headlines for his personal life, including a star-studded wedding in Venice in 2025.

Mr Bezos has also more closely aligned himself with President Donald Trump’s administration, attending his inauguration in January and ordering a pro-business revamp of the opinion page at the Washington Post, the news media outlet he owns.

Project Prometheus enters a crowded AI market dominated by tech giants Google, Meta and Microsoft, alongside pioneering firms OpenAI and Anthropic.

The venture is part of a broader trend towards applying AI to physical tasks, often using robotics.

Unlike the generative AI technology behind ChatGPT, it aims to develop systems that learn from real-world experimentation, rather than just digital text, with the goal of accelerating scientific discovery in physics, chemistry and engineering.

Another dramatic shift since Mr Bezos founded Amazon in 1994 is the rise of AI-native start-ups built around ultra-lean teams – a reversal of the old playbook that equated headcount expansion with business growth.

When Mr Bezos left the CEO seat at Amazon, he oversaw more than 1.6 million employees.

On the company’s most recent earnings call, current CEO Andy Jassy attributed thousands of recent layoffs to ongoing efforts to eliminate layers of bureaucracy after years of over-hiring. 

Some parts of Mr Bezos’ philosophies may require a reboot for the AI era.

His preference for lengthy memos with narratives indicating deep thinking by the author may be outdated now that workers can use generative AI tools to do the writing for them. 

But his Darwinian approach to work culture jibes with what is expected now at many of the hottest AI start-ups. And some of his management ideals, like keeping teams lean and fast and making them exceptionally talent-dense, will arguably never go out of style.

When Mr Bezos stepped down after 27 years of running Amazon, he was widely lauded as one of the best CEOs in tech history.

If his new start-up succeeds, it will likely come down in part to how relevant his management philosophy still is – or how much it has evolved. BLOOMBERG, AFP