Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and former Google executive Vik Bajaj are leading industrial AI startup Prometheus, which raised $12 billion in a Series B round at a $41 billion valuation, Axios reported on June 11 local time.
Prometheus plans to use the new funding to redesign how physical products are manufactured, from jet engines to medical devices and consumer electronics.
Bezos said, "The cycle from a dream to mass production, and then to putting it out into the world, can be very long." He said, "For example, if you ask a jet engine manufacturer today for an engine that increases thrust by 10 percent, it could become a 10-year programme. We are building tools to help engineers shorten that cycle by more than 10 times."
Prometheus focuses on using AI to optimise machinery and processes in pre-production stages such as prototyping, rather than on factory automation or robots themselves. Axios said the company aims to build an "artificial general engineer."
Bajaj said, "The current speed of physical creation falls far short of the speed of human imagination." He said, "If we make it easier for people to realise what they dream of, there will be more invention and more participation."
Chi-gyu Hwang
delight@d-today.co.kr