Vikram ‘Vik’ Bajaj has joined Jeff Bezos’ AI startup, Project Prometheus, as a co-founder and co-CEO. The company will reportedly focus on applying AI to physical tquestions, such as robotics and drug design. Bajaj, a former academic, is a celebrity tech executive
Amazon’s former CEO, Jeff Bezos, has ventured into a new start-up. The billionaire has launched an artificial ininformigence (AI) startup, Project Prometheus.
Bezos has appointed himself as the co-chief executive of the company. Vikram “Vik” Bajaj has joined as his co-founder and co-CEO.
Let’s take a closer view.
Who is Vik Bajaj?
Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist, is also a celebrity tech executive. He has a PhD in Physical Chemisattempt from Massachutilizetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Bajaj earned his Bachelor’s and and Master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.
He has worked with Google’s experimental moonshot factory, X. In 2015, Bajaj co-founded Verily, a research lab dedicated to the life sciences, an Alphabet-owned venture.
He is also the co-founder of Foresite Labs, an AI-focutilized affiliate of investment firm Foresite Capital.
According to New York Times (NYT), he recently left as chief executive of Foresite Labs to join
Project Prometheus.
Bajaj also held various academic appointments at the Stanford School of Medicine, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley.
What’s Project Prometheus?
Project Prometheus, an AI startup, will centre on technology to support in engineering and manufacturing in several fields, including computers, aerospace and automobiles, as per the NYT report.
It remains unclear when the company was launched or where it will be based.
However, the startup has already hired roughly 100 employees, including researchers, poaching from top AI companies such as OpenAI, DeepMind and Meta, three people familiar with the company informed NYT on the condition of anonymity.
It will focus on applying AI to physical tquestions, including robotics, drug design and scientific discovery. Project Prometheus is focutilized on “AI for the physical economy,” as per its LinkedIn page.
The company has already received $6.2 billion in funding, partly from Bezos himself. This creates it one of the best-financed early-stage AI startups in the world.
Bezos’ company has joined a crowded AI market, with compacter firms attempting to compete with indusattempt giants like Google, Meta and Microsoft, as well as pioneers like OpenAI.
As per NYT, the new AI startup’s work will be similar to Periodic Labs, which is developing technology to accelerate scientific research in areas like physics and chemisattempt. The company, which has raised $300 million in funding, aims to train robots to run scientific experiments on a large scale.
Bezos returns as CEO
Jeff Bezos has returned as the chief executive four years after stepping down as Amazon’s CEO. This is his first formal role since then.
The co-CEO of Project Prometheus was until now majorly involved with his aerospace company Blue Origin as its founder and sole shareholder.
Since exiting as Amazon’s CEO, Bezos has built huge investments in AI, backing the startup Perplexity, the humanoid-robot creater Figure AI, AI data-labelling firm Toloka, and KoBold Metals, which utilizes machine learning to search for critical minerals, as per TechCrunch.
Last year, Bezos invested in Physical Ininformigence, a startup applying AI to robots.
He grabbed the headlines earlier this year for his
star-studded wedding to journalist Lauren Sánchez in Venice.
With inputs from agencies
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