Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder and one of the world’s most influential tech pioneers, is officially returning to hands-on leadership as co-CEO of a new artificial intelligence (AI) venture called Project Prometheus, The New York Times reported, citing three people familiar with the company. This marks Bezos’s most significant operational role since he stepped down as Amazon’s chief executive in 2021.

Bezos is making a comeback as co-CEO, to be exact: alongside Vik Bajaj, whose LinkedIn profile identifies him as co-CEO and co-founder of Project Prometheus. Bajaj is a former director of GoogleX, the so-called “Moonshot Factory,” where he worked closely with Google co-founder Sergey Brin on efforts including the self-driving car that became Waymo. The Times reported that the new startup has $6.2 billion in funding, including some from Bezos himself. With a very low profile, details about the startup are hard to find, including when it was founded and where it will be based. According to the Times, it will focus on AI to support engineering and manufacturing in fields such as computers, aerospace, and automobiles, indicating that it will be closely involved with Bezos’ other startup, the commercial space exploration company Blue Origin.

Project Prometheus is still in stealth mode, but its focus is emerging: the practical application of AI to manufacturing and engineering across computing, automotive, and aerospace sectors. The name, drawn from Greek mythology, refers to the Titan who brought fire to humanity—symbolizing both inspiration and potential peril, themes at the heart of ongoing global debates about artificial intelligence’s risks and rewards. Bezos’ recent predictions and public statements about AI indicate that he is plowing through concerns about a bubble in the space and still sees significant room for tech to reshape everyday life.

Space dreams

Bezos’s vision for the future extends beyond just developing smarter AI. Recently, while speaking at Italian Tech Week 2025, he remarked, “In the next kind of couple of decades, I believe there will be millions of people living in space … That’s how fast this is going to accelerate,” emphasizing that advanced robotics and AI will enable not just off-planet living, but also new forms of labor and creativity. Bezos told the audience, “If you need to do some work on the surface of the moon or anywhere else, we will be able to send robots to do that work, and that will be much more cost-effective than sending humans.”

Project Prometheus seems to be part of this vision, working hand in hand with Blue Origin to realize Bezos’ dreams of human expansion beyond Earth. As CEO of Amazon, Bezos championed a television program called The Expansethat was canceled by cable TV channel Syfy; it depicted a near future when humans would leave Earth to travel around the solar system. Bezos announced that Amazon Prime was saving the show onstage at the the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference in 2022.

Bezos’ optimism stands in stark contrast to some more pessimistic narratives in technology circles. As Bezos put it in Italy this year, “Civilizational abundance comes from our inventions … these tools increase our abundance, and that pattern will continue.” The launch has already sparked debate about how artificial intelligence will shape the future—not just on Earth, but, as Bezos and allies like Elon Musk and Sam Altman also predict, potentially across the solar system. The rise of Project Prometheus serves as a philosophical and technological statement, blending Bezos’ relentless optimism about “civilizational abundance” and his conviction that AI can be a force for good.

At the same tech conference in Turin, Bezos made headlines by saying that “There is an AI bubble.” Still, he described it as an “industrial bubble” rather than a financial one, drawing parallels to the biotech bubble of the 1990s that, despite failures, ultimately yielded life-saving innovations. Bezos emphasized the long-term societal benefits of AI despite short-term market excesses, saying, “This is real, the benefits to society from AI are going to be gigantic.” He noted that during such bubbles, “everything gets funded,” making it hard to distinguish good ideas from bad, which he said “is probably happening today” in AI investments. His optimism aligns with predictions of transformative change, stating, “AI is real, and it is going to change every industry.”

At the same conference, Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon agreed that things look bubbly. “There will be a lot of capital that was deployed that didn’t deliver returns,” he said. “We just don’t know how that will play out.” Bezos is betting that he knows how things will play out.