TL;DR<\/p>\n
Key Hire: Jeff Bezos\u2019s Project Prometheus has recruited Kyle Kosic, a co-founder of Elon Musk\u2019s xAI who most recently worked at OpenAI. Startup Strategy: Prometheus is building physical-world AI for industries like aerospace and manufacturing, backed by billions in funding from Bezos and sovereign wealth funds. xAI Exodus: All 11 non-Musk co-founders have now left xAI, with Musk acknowledging the company \u201cwas not built right the first time around.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jeff Bezos\u2019 Project Prometheus has hired Kyle Kosic<\/a>, an xAI co-founder who led the infrastructure behind Elon Musk\u2019s Colossus supercomputer, from OpenAI. Kosic is expected to continue working on AI infrastructure at the secretive startup.<\/p>\n Project Prometheus is an artificial intelligence startup co-founded and co-led by Jeff Bezos that focuses on \u201cphysical AI\u201d, systems designed to interact with and transform the material world rather than just processing digital data like text or images.<\/p>\n Building on Bezos\u2019s reported multi-billion-dollar commitment, the hire signals how aggressively Prometheus is recruiting top AI talent as it pursues a physical-world AI strategy. Kosic was the first of xAI\u2019s co-founders to leave the company in 2024, beginning a wave of co-founder departures<\/a> that has since seen all 11 non-Musk co-founders depart. Neither Prometheus nor Bezos has commented publicly on the hire.<\/p>\n Prometheus\u2019s Physical-World AI Ambitions <\/p>\n Project Prometheus, co-founded by Bezos and former Google Life Sciences executive Vik Bajaj, is building AI designed to understand the physical world with a focus on aerospace, automobile manufacturing, and engineering. Rather than building a general-purpose model and seeking applications afterward, the startup plans to acquire companies and use their proprietary operational data to train industry-specific models.<\/p>\n First surfacing publicly in November 2025, the venture has amassed significant funding, partly from Bezos himself. According to the Financial Times, the founders are looking to raise tens of billions of dollars for a permanent investment vehicle modeled after Berkshire Hathaway, acquiring stakes in companies across its target industries to train specialized AI models. Prometheus is also in discussions with sovereign investment funds from Singapore and Gulf nations.<\/p>\n By November 2025, the company had hired around 100 employees across offices in San Francisco, London, and Zurich. It has since grown to hundreds of staff, drawing researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta. Aggressive recruitment from leading AI labs underscores Prometheus\u2019s strategy of building domain expertise through top-tier talent acquisition.<\/p>\n xAI Talent Drain <\/p>\n Kosic\u2019s move to Prometheus caps a journey across three leading AI organizations. He co-founded xAI alongside Musk in 2023 and led the infrastructure team that built the Memphis-based Colossus supercluster<\/a>, which was assembled in just 120 days. He left xAI to join OpenAI in 2024 before moving to Prometheus.<\/p>\n