Jeff Bezos gets a new job and is going to be CEO again. Elon Musk calls him 'copy cat'

Tech billionaire Jeff Bezos is going to be CEO again. This time, Bezos has appointed himself co-CEO of an AI startup called Project Prometheus, the New York Times reported, citing anonymous sources. This comes almost four years after he stepped down as Amazon CEO. The startup will focus on developing AI for engineering and manufacturing in various fields and has already received $6.2 billion in funding. And this amount is much more than many companies are able to raise in their lifetimes.

Leading the company alongside Jeff Bezos is his co-founder and co-CEO Vik Bajaj, a celebrity tech executive, who is a physicist and chemist best known for his work at Google’s moonshot factory, X, where he founded the health startup Verily.

Jeff Bezos becomes CEO again

Jeff Bezos will serve as co-chief executive (co-CEO) of Project Prometheus and this marks Bezos's first operational role since stepping down as Amazon CEO in July 2021. Project Prometheus is focusing on AI that is helping in engineering and manufacturing across multiple sectors and the startup has already hired 100 employees, poaching several from firms like OpenAI, DeepMind and Meta, according to the Times.


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Project Prometheus's mission aligns with Bezos's longstanding interest in space exploration through Blue Origin, his rocket company that recently achieved a successful booster landing. Not much is known about Project Prometheus, as Bezos did not disclose where the company will be based or how its technology might function. The world’s third-richest person has been closely involved at his aerospace company Blue Origin for several years as its founder and sole shareholder, but becoming a CEO again will be the first formal role Bezos has taken since stepping down from Amazon.

Project Prometheus is part of a growing group of companies using AI for physical tasks such as robotics, drug development and scientific research. The company aims to build AI systems that learn from real-world experiments instead of relying only on digital data. This approach could give it an advantage in practical manufacturing. With $6.2 billion in funding, Project Prometheus has become one of the world’s best-funded early-stage startups, overtaking the $2 billion raised by Thinking Machines Lab earlier this year.

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Elon Musk mocks Jeff Bezos

Elon Musk took a swipe at Jeff Bezos on Monday after the Amazon founder returned to an operational role to lead a major new AI venture. Quote-tweeting a post announcing the move, Musk wrote, using emojis, “Haha no way, Copycat," reviving the long-running rivalry between the two billionaires.

Jeff Bezos has drawn closer to the Trump administration in recent months, attending the president’s inauguration in January and pushing a pro-business shift in the editorial direction of The Washington Post. Project Prometheus is entering an AI sector led by giants such as Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic. Instead of using text-based training like generative AI models, the startup plans to develop systems that learn from real-world experiments. Its goal is to speed up breakthroughs in physics, chemistry and engineering.