In what promises to be a fierce competition, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos will compete with fellow billionaires Elon Musk and Sam Altman in the AI start-up space.
Amazon (AMZN 4.42%) founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos will co-lead his new artificial intelligence (AI) start-up called Project Prometheus, The New York Times reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The new position will be Bezos’s first operational role since he stepped down as Amazon CEO in July 2021. He remains heavily involved in the e-commerce leader, however, as he serves as the executive chairman of the board. Bezos is also the founder of Blue Origin, a space company.
As soon as I read this news, I thought: Another catalyst to drive Nvidia (NVDA 2.81%) stock higher!
First, I’ll summarize the Bezos news and then discuss why it’s great news for Nvidia.
Image source: Getty Images.
Project Prometheus
Project Prometheus was publicly launched on Monday, although the highly secretive company’s founding date is unknown. It launched with $6.2 billion in funding, some of which came from Bezos. The company is reportedly focusing on physical AI, including the engineering and manufacturing of computers, autos, and spacecraft, according to The Times.
Bezos is co-leading the company alongside Vik Bajaj, who has held leadership roles at companies such as Google X (now known as just X), Alphabet‘s “moonshot factory.” Bajaj is also a managing director at Foresite Capital.
Bezos earns my kudos for a creative company name. Prometheus — which translates to “forethought” — is a figure from Greek mythology who stole fire from the gods to give to humanity. As a benefactor of humanity, he also taught humans various skills. Some folks might recognize the name from a 2012 film of the same name.
The “battle of the billionaires” for AI application company supremacy
I’ll start this section by asking how competitive you think that so-called self-made billionaires — especially those at the very top of Bloomberg’s ‘Billionaires Index’ — are?
A. Moderately more competitive than the typical person.
B. Much more competitive than the typical person.
C. Fiercely competitive.
I’ll go with “C” — and I’d guess that most people would, too.
Now let’s pivot back to the Project Prometheus news.
Tesla‘s Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in the world with a wealth of $435 billion as of Nov. 17, per Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. At one time, Bezos held that title. He’s now No. 3 on that index with $255 billion. (Oracle founder Larry Ellison is No. 2.) Bezos’ slip from the top spot can in part be attributed to his costly divorce.
The two billionaires already compete in the space sector, with Musk founding SpaceX and Bezos founding Blue Origin. Now, they’ll both have AI start-ups, as Musk founded xAI in early 2023. Its flagship product is the chatbot Grok.
Bezos has already proven with Amazon that he can form a start-up, take it public, and grow it into a massive company. It’s the fifth most valuable company on the S&P 500 index. While Musk is controversial, one can’t deny that he has worked wonders growing Tesla, the eighth most valuable company on the S&P 500. The fact that the company even survived is a considerable accomplishment.
It seems likely that both xAI and Project Prometheus will eventually go public. That’s also true of OpenAI, co-founded and led by billionaire Sam Altman, who has proven adept at making big deals. OpenAI is best known for its ChatGPT chatbot, which caused a sensation upon its launch in late 2022, sparking a rush among companies to acquire generative AI capabilities.
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How Nvidia is poised to profit from the “battle of the billionaires” for AI application company supremacy
Musk’s xAI and Altman’s ChatGPT are direct competitors, with each company’s flagship product being an AI-powered chatbot. To say that each man naturally wants his AI company to be much more successful than the others is probably an understatement. Musk and Altman have had a very public falling out that has played out on X (formerly Twitter). This stems from disagreements over OpenAI’s direction, as Musk is also a co-founder of the company, though no longer associated with it.
We can’t know what others are thinking, but Musk called Bezos a “copycat” amid news of Project Prometheus. Sure, it might be meant as good-natured teasing, but Musk has good reason to feel concerned with this news, as Bezos will be a formidable competitor.
On that note, at least initially, it appears that Project Prometheus will operate in a somewhat different part of the AI sector than xAI. Nonetheless, they will compete for financing, as well as for employees. And if and when they go public, they will be competing for shareholders.
What’s poised to be particularly fierce competition among Musk, Bezos, Altman, and perhaps others, for AI company supremacy, should be great news for Nvidia. As these men’s AI companies strive to be the top dog in AI application deployment, they will likely continue to increase their spending on Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) and other AI-enabling technologies, such as its high-performance networking products. Nvidia GPUs are considered the gold standard for training AI models and deploying AI applications.
It would seem to me that Project Prometheus could utilize Amazon’s custom AI chips, but likely, it will also employ Nvidia GPUs.
In short, the fiercer the competition for AI application company supremacy, the more Nvidia is likely to benefit.