Jeff Bezos-backed Project Prometheus hires xAI co-founder Kyle Kosic

In short: Jeff Bezos-backed Project Prometheus has hired Kyle Kosic, a co-founder of Elon Musk’s xAI who previously worked at OpenAI.

What happened

Kyle Kosic has joined Project Prometheus, a secretive start-up backed by Jeff Bezos, according to people familiar with the move. The company is led by Bezos and former Google executive Vikram Bajaj.

Kosic is known for helping start xAI with Elon Musk. At xAI, he led infrastructure work behind “Colossus,” a large supercomputer (a very powerful computer used to train AI). He later returned to OpenAI in 2024, and will now continue working on AI infrastructure at Prometheus, the people said.

Prometheus has hired hundreds of staff across San Francisco, London, and Zurich. It has focused on engineers and researchers, including people who have experience building large computing systems.

The company’s goal is to build AI that can work in the physical world, not just with text. You can think of this as trying to move from an AI that reads and writes to one that can also understand how things behave in real life, like machines, materials, and motion.

Prometheus is said to be especially focused on industrial uses, such as jet engine design. It is also exploring a plan to buy stakes in companies across areas like engineering, aviation, architecture, and design, partly to access data that could improve its AI.

Why it matters

This hire is another sign of intense competition for experienced AI talent. If Prometheus succeeds, its work could affect how factories and engineering firms design and run complex systems, but it also raises questions about how companies collect and use valuable industrial data.

Source: Financial Times