Project Prometheus, the physical-AI startup co-led by Jeff Bezos and former Verily co-founder Vik Bajaj, on June 11 confirmed a $12 billion Series B at a $41 billion valuation, the company's second mega-round in under a year and one of the largest single bets ever placed on physical AI.
Who Is In The Round
Bezos personally led the financing alongside JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, DST Global and Arch Venture Partners. The Series B more than doubles the $6.2 billion Series A that launched Prometheus in late 2025, with Bezos again the largest individual backer. Speaking publicly for the first time, the Amazon founder told CNBC: "We're not being secretive," and indicated that a large portion of the capital will go toward Prometheus's compute needs.
What Prometheus Builds
Prometheus is developing what it calls an artificial general engineer: software capable of automating the design and manufacturing of complex physical products from jet engines to drug compounds. The roughly 150-person team is split across San Francisco, London and Zurich, with senior recruits drawn from OpenAI, Google DeepMind and NVIDIA. Bezos pushed back on widespread AI-job-loss predictions, instead forecasting what he called "labor scarcity" as productivity gains raise living standards.
How This Differs From Last Month
Reuters reports of a $10 billion raise at a $38 billion valuation circulated in late May. The June 11 announcement formally confirms the Series B with revised figures ($12B at $41B) and Bezos's first on-the-record comments, building on the earlier $10B speculation reporting and Prometheus's recent acquisition of General Agents to add an agentic computing layer.
Why It Matters
Prometheus joins a thickening field of richly funded physical-AI plays competing for the same talent and compute. Recent rounds include NEURA Robotics's $1.4B Series C, PhysicsX's $300M Series C at $2.4B, Generalist AI's $400M and Flourish's $500M Bezos-backed Series B. Investors are arguing that physical-world systems are inherently more defensible than pure software, and Prometheus is now the highest-priced expression of that thesis.
What Comes Next
Bezos and Bajaj are keeping product specifics under wraps, but the new capital signals Prometheus intends to operate at frontier-lab scale on compute. The next milestones will likely be early external pilots with industrial partners and a clearer view of how the artificial general engineer differs from existing AI-assisted design and simulation stacks.
Reporting based on coverage from CNBC, TechCrunch and GeekWire.