AI ignites the return of Bezos the inventor

‘Tm the least retired person in the world,’ Amazon founder says

- Tim Higgins

With AI, it looks as though Jeff Bezos is back to building and has a new list of ideas on his whiteboard.

(AFP)

It isn’t hard to think that Jeff Bezos left his role as Amazon.com's CEO to enjoy a slower life filled with yachting and celebrity parties.

But he would most certainly object to that characterization. He has been talking publicly for the past year about how his schedule is really filled with work at his private rocket company, Blue Origin, and, increasingly, with artificial intelligence.

“I’m the least retired person in the world,” Bezos mused recently at a tech conference.

That was before news broke this past week that Bezos was becoming co-chief executive officer of an AI startup, dubbed Project Prometheus, where he is also an investor. The job would mark the first time he has picked up a CEO title since stepping away from day-to-day management at Amazon in 2021.

Soon the revelation drew taunts from Elon Musk, who suggested his rival was a copycat. At a high level, they are both playing in all of the same sci-fi futures made popular when they were young: space, robots, EVs; and, more and more, aiming for powerful AI.

But how they have structured their entrepreneurial endeavors are dramatically different, underscoring the differences in how they view their responsibilities to shareholders and how they make their big bets.

Musk wants to be the boss of everything. He is CEO of several separate companies, including Tesla, the publicly traded electric-vehicle company, and privately held SpaceX and xAI, the rocket maker and AI startup, respectively.