Jeff Bezos' Prometheus raises $12B Series B at $41B for AI-driven engineering

The round closed larger than first reported. In April, Reuters and the Financial Times described a $10 billion raise at about a $38 billion valuation. The final close came in at $41 billion, a 7.9% markup from the April figure. Bezos was the largest backer of the $6.2 billion Series A and joined the new round too. The company has about 150 employees across San Francisco, London, and Zurich. Bezos has pointed to specialized training data and compute as the two big cost drivers, and indicated that a large portion of the capital will go toward compute. The company is co-led by Vik Bajaj, a Verily co-founder. Its early targets are aerospace, automotive, and semiconductor industries, and Bezos has called Blue Origin a case study for a customer. Bezos also addressed reports of a fund of up to $100 billion to buy manufacturing companies, saying Prometheus may buy parts of companies that could benefit from its technology. Skeptics note the valuation rose without a disclosed product release or customer win. For founders, the round shows where large pools of capital are going: AI for physical engineering, not chatbots. Startups in industrial software, simulation or design tools may now face a competitor with $18 billion, an acquisition budget and its own manufacturing customers. It also raises the price of compute and specialized data in this niche.