'Copycat': Elon Musk's Takes Jibe At Jeff Bezos As Amazon Founder Joins AI Race With Project Prometheus

Elon Musk on Monday took a dig at Jeff Bezos, calling the Amazon founder a "copycat" after he announced the launch of his new AI startup.

Called Project Prometheus, the new AI startup launched by the billionaire focuses on artificial intelligence for engineering and manufacturing across industries such as computers, automobiles and spacecraft. Bezos will serve as co-CEO.

"Haha, no way. Copycat," the Tesla, SpaceX boss said in a post on X, reacting to one such report. Musk’s AI startup xAI was founded in 2023.

Bezos’ startup has reportedly raised $6.2 billion in funding, including contributions from Bezos himself. It has quickly grown to nearly 100 employees, including researchers formerly at Meta, OpenAI and Google DeepMind, according to an AFP report.

The latest venture signals intensifying competition in the AI space. The move also marks the return of Bezos to an operational role since stepping down as Amazon CEO in July 2021. At Blue Origin, a competitor to Elon Musk’s SpaceX, he remains founder, not an executive.

Project Prometheus is entering a crowded AI market. Small startups and giants like Google and OpenAI are already serving as the leading innovators in the space.

Project Prometheus has maintained a low profile and the exact date of its founding remains unclear, according to a New York Times report. The startup aligns with Jeff Bezos’ long-standing interest in space exploration, focusing on AI technologies to support engineering and manufacturing across multiple sectors.

Details about its operations and headquarters are currently also unknown.

According to the AFP report, Bezos will serve as co-CEO of Project Prometheus alongside Vik Bajaj, a Silicon Valley researcher. Bajaj previously worked with Google co-founder Sergey Brin at the company’s experimental X lab and co-founded Verily.

The report added that the venture is part of a growing trend of applying AI to physical tasks. Unlike generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Project Prometheus aims to create AI that learns from real-world experiments rather than digital text alone. Its goal is to accelerate scientific discovery and innovation across fields like physics, chemistry, and engineering by combining AI with hands-on research.