Bezos AI company poaches xAI co-founder from OpenAI

ME News report, April 7 (UTC+8), The Financial Times in the UK reported that Jeff Bezos’s AI company Project Prometheus, founded by Amazon, has hired Kyle Kosic, co-founder of xAI. Kosic previously co-founded xAI with Elon Musk and led the infrastructure buildout for the supercomputer Colossus. In 2024, he returned to his former employer, OpenAI, and now has joined Prometheus to continue handling AI infrastructure.

Prometheus has been hiring hundreds of engineers and AI researchers at its headquarters in San Francisco, as well as in its offices in London and Zurich. According to insiders, it has “assembled the largest data corpus in the engineering field.” The company plans to acquire equity stakes in companies in industries including engineering, aerospace, and construction, to obtain data and dispatch engineers to improve operations. Bezos and co-CEO, Vikram Bajaj—co-founder of Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences)—are raising several tens of billions of dollars for a “perpetual capital tool,” which insiders liken to a “Berkshire Hathaway-style holding company.” The company is currently in talks with sovereign wealth funds from Singapore and Gulf countries for investment.

Kosic was one of the earlier departures among Musk’s 11 xAI co-founders. Now all 11 have left; the last two, Manuel Kroiss and Ross Nordeen, left at the end of March. Some people have expressed dissatisfaction with Musk’s management style. (Source: Financial Times)