Elon Musk on Monday teased Jeff Bezos, calling the former Amazon CEO and rival a “copycat” after reports that Bezos would serve as co-CEO of Project Prometheus, a new multibillion-dollar AI startup he is partly funding.
Key Facts
Project Prometheus has already raised $6.2 billion in funding, some of which reportedly comes from Bezos himself. The New York Times described the company as “one of the most well-financed early-stage startups in the world.”
Scientist Vik Bajaj, who previously served as a director at Google X, the company’s secretive advanced research and development arm, will serve as co-CEO.
Bajaj updated his LinkedIn profile to list himself as Co-CEO and Co-Founder of Project Prometheus. The startup’s profile page is mostly blank, showing a blacked-out logo and a description that reads “AI for the physical economy.”
Bezos has not publicly commented, and his recent social media posts have focused on Blue Origin’s rocket launches.
Musk, founder of his AI company xAI, reacted on X, writing “Haha no way” with a laughing emoji, followed by “Copy” with a cat emoji.
What We Know About Project Prometheus
Details about the startup are limited. According to The New York Times, it will focus on AI applications in engineering and manufacturing across areas like computers, aerospace, and automobiles. The company has reportedly hired 100 employees, including researchers recruited from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta. It is unclear if the company’s work overlaps with or affects Amazon’s AI efforts. In November last year, Physical Intelligence, another AI startup aiming to bring general-purpose AI into the physical world, raised $400 million from several investors, including Bezos.
Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk: A Longstanding Rivalry
Bezos and Musk have had a yearslong feud. In 2013, Musk accused Bezos’ Blue Origin of using a “phony blocking tactic” after the company protested NASA granting SpaceX exclusive use of a launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center. Musk said Blue Origin had “not yet succeeded” in creating a reliable spacecraft, despite more than ten years of development. Later, when Blue Origin was granted a patent for drone ships in 2014, SpaceX petitioned to overturn it, arguing the technology was “old hat” by 2009.
Over the years, Musk has repeatedly called Bezos a copycat. In 2019, he said this after Amazon announced plans to launch over 3,000 internet-providing satellites, following SpaceX’s similar initiative. In 2020, he repeated the claim after Amazon acquired the self-driving startup Zoox. Bezos has mostly targeted SpaceX rather than Musk directly, calling the company’s goal of reaching Mars “unmotivating” in 2019 and later protesting NASA awarding SpaceX a $2.9 billion lunar contract.
Forbes Valuation
Bezos’ net worth is estimated at $245.9 billion, making him the third richest person in the world on Forbes’ Real Time Billionaires List, behind Elon Musk and Larry Ellison.
Additional reporting by Ty Roush.
This story was updated at 11:28 pm AST on Monday.
