AI startup managementJeff Bezos has a new job
For Amazon founder Bezos, this is the first time since he stepped down as managing director in July 2021 that he has taken on a formal operational role at a company. With his new job, he entered a very competitive market.
Amazon founder Jezz Bezos is reorienting himself professionally. According to media reports, Bezos will serve as one of the managing directors of AI startup Project Prometheus in the future. It is not yet known exactly what the company did. But the focus is on artificial intelligence, which could improve manufacturing in areas such as computers, cars and aerospace.
According to the New York Times, the company has raised $6.2 billion in capital. Bezos himself is also said to have invested. This makes it one of the world’s best-funded early-stage startups, the report said, citing three people familiar with the company. Based on this, Project Prometheus has hired nearly 100 employees, including researchers from leading AI companies such as OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta.
This is the first time Bezos has taken a formal operational role at a company since he stepped down as CEO of Amazon in July 2021. Although he owns shares in Blue Origin, his official title at the space company is simply “founder.” Bezos’ co-chief executive is Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist who worked closely with Google co-founder Sergey Brin on Google X.
With his new startup, Bezos is entering a competitive AI market where several small companies are trying to make inroads with new software and new products. At the same time, they have to face industry giants like OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft-backed Google.
Recent multi-billion dollar investments by companies in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) are fueling fears of a speculative bubble. Some observers and parties involved point to the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000. At that time, stock prices collapsed completely after investors’ high expectations for technology companies at that time were not met.
“When people are so enthusiastic about artificial intelligence, for example, every experiment gets funded. And amidst that excitement, investors have a hard time distinguishing between good ideas and bad ideas,” Bezos said on October 3 at Italian Tech Week. “A bubble like a banking bubble, a crisis in the banking system, it’s really bad.” But technology-induced bubbles aren’t that bad. They might even be good. “Because when things calm down and you see who the winner is, society will benefit from this discovery,” Bezos predicted.
