The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is in talks with some of the world’s largest asset managers to raise a new fund that could reach $100 billion. The vehicle is described in investor materials as a manufacturing transformation platform, focused on acquisition opportunities across industrial sectors such as chipmaking, defense, and aerospace. The plan is to buy established manufacturers and use AI tools to improve automation, design, and operating performance.
According to the report, Bezos has already taken the fundraising effort across several regions. He traveled to the Middle East months ago to discuss the proposal with sovereign wealth funds, and more recently went to Singapore to continue those talks. If completed at the proposed scale, the fund would stand alongside SoftBank’s $100 billion Vision Fund in size, putting it far above most traditional buyout vehicles.
Project Prometheus sits at the center of the strategy
A key part of the plan is Project Prometheus, a startup Bezos founded late last year where he serves as co-chief executive. The Journal said this is his first formal leadership role at a technology company since stepping down as Amazon CEO in July 2021.
The company is building AI systems designed to understand and simulate the physical world. Examples cited in the report include modeling how air moves around an aircraft wing and estimating where a metal component might fracture under stress. Bezos intends to use that technology across companies owned by the fund, with early commercial efforts expected to focus on engineering simulation and design software.
Bezos’ co-CEO at Project Prometheus is Vik Bajaj, a Stanford Medical School professor and a co-founder of Google life sciences unit Verily. The company has also recruited staff from OpenAI and Google DeepMind. It is now in discussions to raise as much as $6 billion in a new round, after bringing in $6.2 billion last year. Blue Origin CEO David Limp has joined its board.
JPMorgan and other tech figures are also moving into the field
The Journal also said JPMorgan has discussed joining the effort through its newly created Security and Resilience Initiative. That fund was launched in December last year with a size of $10 billion, and former Berkshire Hathaway investment manager Todd Combs is helping lead it.
Bezos is not alone in targeting AI-driven industrial change. Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has launched a startup called Atoms and repositioned it as a platform for applying AI to manufacturing. Elon Musk, for his part, continues to push Tesla’s humanoid robot program. In the Journal’s framing, a group of first-generation Silicon Valley founders is now concentrating on automation in the physical economy.