Jeff Bezos Raising $100 Billion to Supercharge Manufacturing With AI

Jeff Bezos is meeting with some of the world’s largest asset managers to raise $100 billion for a new fund that would buy manufacturing companies and transform them with the help of artificial intelligence, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday (March 19).

Investor documents call the fund a “manufacturing transformation vehicle” and say it will focus on companies in sectors such as chipmaking, defense and aerospace, according to the report.

This fund is separate from Project Prometheus, a company that appointed Bezos as co-CEO last year and that is building AI models that simulate the behavior of things in the physical world, the report said.

Bezos plans to use Project Prometheus’ technology to transform companies owned by the new fund, per the report.

The WSJ noted that the Financial Times reported earlier about a fundraising effort by Project Prometheus.

The Financial Times reported in February that Project Prometheus is raising “tens of billions of dollars” to buy manufacturing businesses disrupted by AI and then use the technology to improve their margins.

Project Prometheus raised $6.2 billion last year in a deal that valued it at $30 billion, according to the FT report. The company aims to apply AI to manufacturing and industry, while also acquiring companies that Bezos and co-founder Vikram Bajaj expect to be disrupted by the technology.

Robert Nelsen, co-founder and managing director of ARCH Venture Partners and a director at Project Prometheus, said during an event in January, per the report: “Figuring out how to reinvent the physical world is a big challenge. [But] the pace of innovation in AI right now is truly hard to understate.”

It was reported in November that Project Prometheus launched with $6.2 billion in financing, some of it from Bezos himself, and that this marks the first time Bezos has taken an official operational role in a company since leaving Amazon.

Later in November, it was reported that Project Prometheus had acquired computer agent maker General Agents.

PYMNTS reported in November that physical AI is emerging as the next stage of robotics as as advances in sensing, perception and large AI models give machines capabilities that traditional automation never supported.

JPMorganChase said in December that Bezos would be among the 12 members of an external advisory council for a bank initiative that aims to help companies grow, innovate and accelerate manufacturing, primarily in the United States.