Amazon founder launches AI venture Project Prometheus, signalling potential shifts for retail and fashion

Jeff Bezos is returning to the chief executive role with a new artificial intelligence venture, Project Prometheus, a move that could reshape how technology flows into sectors including retail and fashion. According to The Times, the early-stage company has secured 6.2 billion dollars in initial funding, placing it among the world’s most well-capitalised AI start-ups.

Bezos will lead the company as co-chief executive alongside Vik Bajaj, a scientist and former Google X executive who also helped establish Alphabet’s biotech arm Verily. This marks Bezos’s first CEO position since departing Amazon in 2021, though he has remained active through his aerospace venture Blue Origin.

A new AI player with serious talent

The Times reports Project Prometheus has already hired close to 100 employees, drawing senior AI talent from OpenAI, Meta and Google DeepMind. The company will focus on advanced AI for engineering and manufacturing in fields such as aerospace, computing and automotive.

The timing places Prometheus in the middle of an overheated AI boom. Speaking at the Times Tech Summit in October, Meta executive Sir Nick Clegg warned that current valuations were “crackers” and that many AI business models risk exposure if the market cools.

Bezos, however, has argued that AI is experiencing a productive “industrial bubble,” saying in Turin last month that heavy investment would ultimately deliver “gigantic” societal benefits once winners emerge.

Implications for retail and fashion

Bezos’s return to hands-on leadership raises questions about how breakthroughs from Project Prometheus could filter into Amazon, and, by extension, the wider retail and fashion ecosystem.

AI is already driving major shifts in the sector, from automated product tagging and pricing to supply-chain forecasting, on-demand manufacturing and returns optimisation. If Prometheus develops advanced engineering-grade models, these could accelerate:

• More efficient global logistics
• Smarter inventory and demand prediction
• Faster prototyping and product development
• Increased supply-chain transparency and sustainability modelling

With retailers facing high costs, tighter margins and regulatory pressure around traceability, Amazon’s potential access to next-generation AI could reshape competitive dynamics.

Whether Project Prometheus becomes a defining force or simply another heavyweight contender in the AI arms race remains uncertain. But Bezos’s return signals that the next phase of AI development will have implications far beyond Silicon Valley, including in the fashion and retail worlds that increasingly depend on Amazon’s technological infrastructure.