Jeff Bezos close to $10B funding for AI lab Project Prometheus

Jeff Bezos is close to finalizing a $10 billion funding round for his artificial intelligence laboratory, Project Prometheus, at a $38 billion valuation, according to a Financial Times report citing people familiar with the deal. The startup, which launched in November 2025 with $6.2 billion in initial funding, is developing what the AI industry calls "physical AI" - systems that learn through interaction with the real world and understand the laws of physics, rather than learning from text and images alone. Project Prometheus has attracted JPMorgan and BlackRock as investors in the new round, though the fundraising had not been finalized at the time of publication. The lab is focused on engineering, manufacturing, aerospace, robotics, drug discovery, and logistics automation. The venture is led by chief executive Vikram Bajaj, a former Google X scientist and co-founder of Foresite Labs, and has grown to over 120 employees drawn from leading AI companies including OpenAI, xAI, Meta, and DeepMind. The $10 billion funding round would be among the largest ever for an AI startup, exceeding what most AI companies have raised in their entire history. The deal comes just days after Amazon, the company Bezos founded, committed up to $25 billion in new investment to Anthropic. Physical AI systems require specialized data on material behavior, engineering tolerances, manufacturing processes, and real-world physics, much of which is proprietary and difficult to collect at scale. This scarcity creates both a barrier to entry and a potential long-term advantage for companies that can accumulate such data. The venture marks the first time Bezos has held an operational role in a technology company since leaving Amazon in 2021. Project Prometheus has not yet publicly demonstrated products or commercial deployments.