Prometheus secures $12B to engineer the physical world

Prometheus raises – Prometheus, the physical AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj, raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation, marking its second major funding round. The company aims to build software it calls an “artificial general engineer” to automate the desi

Jeff Bezos talks about labor the way other founders talk about compute: as something that can be reshaped by machines.

On Thursday. Prometheus—his physical AI startup co-founded with Vik Bajaj—announced a new $12 billion funding round. valuing the company at $41 billion. The check comes not only from Bezos himself. but also from major financial firms including JPMorgan Chase. Goldman Sachs. and BlackRock. among others.

It’s the second time Prometheus has opened the money taps. The company launched late last year with an initial raise of $6.2 billion. With this latest round. it has climbed into a tier of valuation that’s rare for young AI companies—one of the most richly valued AI startups ever funded. and among the largest single bets in physical AI.

The target is also broad in a way that makes the stakes feel immediate. Prometheus says it’s building an “artificial general engineer”—software designed to automate the design and manufacturing of complex physical systems. The company’s examples run from jet engines to drug compounds. signaling an ambition to move beyond software tasks and into the messier work of the real world.

Bezos’ view of what that changes is where the tension shows. While some prominent voices in tech have predicted widespread job losses as AI accelerates. Bezos told CNBC that the productivity gains AI delivers will produce what he calls “labor scarcity”—a situation where demand for human workers outpaces supply.

In his framing, that scarcity won’t come with an automatic squeeze of jobs. Instead, it would change how people work. “Significant productivity in the economy is going to raise the standard of living,” Bezos said. “People who today have two-earner households, they’ll become one-earner households. Maybe some people who are working overtime will stop working overtime.”.

The company’s workforce today is small enough to feel almost like a startup still finding its footing—150 employees across offices in San Francisco, London, and Zurich. Prometheus isn’t saying much about what it has already built. The specifics of its current progress are kept under wraps.

Bezos did indicate, however, that a large portion of the new capital will go toward the company’s compute needs—an unsurprising priority for a team aiming to push AI into complex physical design and manufacturing workflows.

That’s also not an abstract point for him. Amazon, where Bezos serves as executive chairman and is the largest individual shareholder, employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide. Over the past year. under CEO Andy Jassy. Amazon has laid off tens of thousands of people as it accelerated its automation push.

Prometheus’ $41 billion valuation places it in the center of a wider investor shift. In recent months, venture capitalists have poured increasing capital into physical AI. Investors and founders involved in the sector argue it’s more defensible than pure software. because the physical world can create moats that code alone cannot.

For now, Prometheus is asking investors to bet that the “physical” shift can be engineered fast enough to matter—and that the labor story that comes with it won’t follow the scripts many in tech have been preparing for.

Prometheus Jeff Bezos Vik Bajaj physical AI artificial general engineer AI startup funding $12 billion $41 billion valuation JPMorgan Chase Goldman Sachs BlackRock compute labor scarcity