BEZOS POURS $12 BILLION INTO AI STARTUP THAT WANTS TO AUTOMATE THE WORK OF ENGINEERS EVERYWHERE Jeff Bezos is not betting on the next chatbot. He is betting on replacing the engineer. His startup Prometheus raised $12 billion in a new funding round this week, giving the company a $41 billion valuation. The round was backed by Bezos personally along with JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock. This is Prometheus’s second raise: the company launched late last year with $6.2 billion, bringing total committed capital past $18 billion. Prometheus is building what it calls an “artificial general engineer,” software designed to fully automate the design and manufacture of complex physical systems: jet engines, drug compounds, anything requiring deep engineering expertise at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. The company currently employs 150 people across San Francisco, London, and Zurich, and is keeping specifics of what it has already built under wraps. Bezos holds a notably optimistic view of what this means for workers. He says AI productivity gains will create what he calls “labor scarcity,” meaning demand for human workers will ultimately outpace supply. That is a convenient framing from the man who chairs Amazon, which has been laying off tens of thousands while accelerating automation across its operations. At a $41 billion valuation, Prometheus is one of the most richly valued AI startups ever funded. The physical AI sector has attracted massive venture capital interest on the thesis that physical world constraints create defensible moats that pure software companies cannot replicate. Whether that thesis holds depends on whether Prometheus can actually build what it is promising.