Jeff Bezos’s secretive AI lab, Project Prometheus, has closed a massive $10 billion funding round, valuing the startup at $38 billion. The deal, confirmed on Friday, April 24, 2026, solidifies Prometheus as one of the most well-funded AI ventures in history, rivaling the capital structures of OpenAI and Anthropic.
Unlike the current wave of generative AI focused on chatbots, Prometheus is pioneering “Physical AI”—models designed to understand the laws of physics and automate complex industrial workflows.
1. Funding and Valuation Details
The $10 billion round was a significant expansion of an initial $6.2 billion raised during the company’s quiet launch in November 2025.
- Valuation: $38 Billion (Post-money).
- Total Capital Raised: Over $16 Billion in less than six months.
- Lead Investors: While no single lead was named, the round saw heavy participation from JPMorgan Chase, BlackRock, DST Global, and Arch Venture Partners.
- Sovereign Interest: Bezos reportedly secured additional commitments from sovereign wealth funds in Singapore and the Middle East to support global infrastructure scaling.
2. What is “Physical AI”?
Project Prometheus is pivoting away from Large Language Models (LLMs) to build Video-Language-Action (VLA) models. The goal is to create AI that can perceive, simulate, and act within the physical world.
- Engineering & Manufacturing: Simulating airflow around wings or predicting structural stress in aerospace components.
- Robotics: Providing the “brains” for autonomous factory floors and warehouse logistics.
- Drug Discovery: Using physical simulations to accelerate molecular engineering.
- Acquisition Strategy: The lab recently acquired General Agents (the creators of the AI agent Ace) to integrate autonomous web-navigation and task-execution capabilities into its physical systems.
3. Leadership: The “Bezos-Bajaj” Partnership
This venture marks Jeff Bezos’s first hands-on operational role since stepping down as Amazon CEO in 2021.
- Co-CEOs: Jeff Bezos and Vikram (Vik) Bajaj (a former Google X scientist and Verily executive).
- The Team: The lab has poached over 120 elite researchers from OpenAI, xAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta. Notable hires include Kyle Kosic (xAI co-founder and infrastructure lead) and David Limp (CEO of Blue Origin, who sits on the board).
- Offices: Headquartered in San Francisco, with major R&D hubs in London and Zurich.
4. The $100 Billion “Holding Company” Plan
In a move that mirrors the “SoftBank Vision Fund” scale, Bezos and Bajaj are reportedly raising a separate $100 billion fund under a Prometheus-linked holding company.
- The Strategy: The fund will acquire majority stakes in traditional manufacturing, logistics, and engineering firms.
- The “Flywheel”: Prometheus will use the data from these portfolio companies to train its AI, then deploy that AI back into the companies to radically increase their efficiency and profitability.