Who is 'Vik' Bajaj, Indian-origin cofounder of Jeff Bezos-backed AI startup Project Prometheus?

The artificial intelligence (AI) startup Prometheus founded by Jeff Bezos with co-founder Vikram “Vik” Bajaj is making waves.

According to a new report, the firm has raised $12 billion (Rs 1.14 lakh crore) at an eye-watering valuation of $41 billion (Rs 3.895 lakh crore).

Bajaj and Bezos are co-CEOs of the firm. Bajaj previously worked at Google with co-founder Sergey Brin, another tech titan. But who is Bajaj? What do we know about him?

Let's take a closer look

Who is Vik Bajaj?

Bajaj, a physicist and chemist, is also a celebrity tech executive.

According to Moneycontrol, Bajaj was born in Canada in 1977. His parents were among the first Indians who settled in Canada after India's Independence. Bajaj's mother was a physician and his father served as an executive in both public and private education.

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He has a PhD in Physical Chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Bajaj earned his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.

Bajaj also held various academic appointments at the Stanford School of Medicine, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he started his career, and the University of California, Berkeley, where he was a postdoctoral fellow.

His private career began in 2013 when he joined then-secret project in Google X led by molecular biologist and biotechnology executive Andy Conrad, as per Moneycontrol.

Bajaj previously worked with Brin at Google’s experimental moonshot factory, X. In 2015, Bajaj co-founded Verily, a research lab dedicated to the life sciences, an Alphabet-owned venture. Previously known as Google Life Sciences, it was later spun off as an independent venture.

"I came to Google because many of the tools of data science, among the most important scientific instruments of my generation, were developed here," Bajaj wrote in a blog. "With observations derived from new clinical tools like wearable sensors and information-dense laboratory platforms in fields including genomics, immunology, and imaging, scientists are able to peer deeper into human biology than ever before," he added.

Bajaj was in a director position at GoogleX. He was involved in the early stages of several Google X projects including autonomous car company Waymo and drone delivery service Wing.

Bajaj is also the co-founder of Foresite Labs, an AI-focused affiliate of investment firm Foresite Capital. According to The New York Times (NYT), he left as chief executive of Foresite Labs to join Project Prometheus.

What’s Project Prometheus?

Project Prometheus, an AI startup, will centre on technology to help in engineering and manufacturing in several fields, including computers, aerospace and automobiles, as per the NYT report.

It remains unclear when the company was launched or where it will be based.

However, the startup has already hired roughly 100 employees, including researchers, poaching from top AI companies such as OpenAI, DeepMind and Meta, three people familiar with the company told NYT on the condition of anonymity.

It will focus on applying AI to physical tasks, including robotics, drug design and scientific discovery. Project Prometheus is focused on “AI for the physical economy,” as per its LinkedIn page.

The company previously received $6.2 billion in funding, partly from Bezos himself. This already made it one of the best-financed early-stage AI startups in the world.

Bezos’ company has joined a crowded AI market, with smaller firms trying to compete with industry giants like Google, Meta and Microsoft, as well as pioneers like OpenAI.

As per NYT, the new AI startup’s work will be similar to Periodic Labs, which is developing technology to accelerate scientific research in areas like physics and chemistry. The company, which has raised $300 million in funding, aims to train robots to run scientific experiments on a large scale.

Bezos returns as CEO

Bezos has returned as the chief executive four years after stepping down as Amazon’s CEO. This is his first formal role since then.

The co-CEO of Project Prometheus was until now majorly involved with his aerospace company Blue Origin as its founder and sole shareholder.

Since exiting as Amazon's CEO, Bezos has made big investments in AI, backing the startup Perplexity, the humanoid-robot maker Figure AI, AI data-labelling firm Toloka, and KoBold Metals, which uses machine learning to search for critical minerals, as per TechCrunch. 

Last year, Bezos invested in Physical Intelligence, a startup applying AI to robots. He grabbed the headlines last year for his star-studded wedding to journalist Lauren Sánchez in Venice.

With inputs from agencies