Bezos family office ramps up AI bets with five June startup deals
Fintrx data cited by CNBC shows Bezos Expeditions accounted for 10% of family office direct startup investments in June.
By Hana Yoshida · Markets Reporter
3 min read
Jeff Bezos’ family office became a leading family-office backer of artificial intelligence startups in June, making five direct investments, according to Fintrx data cited by CNBC. The activity shows how one of the world’s best-known tech founders is putting more capital behind expensive AI companies, including one he helps run.
Fintrx, a private wealth intelligence platform, said Bezos Expeditions accounted for 10% of all family office direct startup deals in June, CNBC reported. The data also showed Bezos Expeditions had made eight direct private-company investments so far this year, making it the most active family office investor tracked by Fintrx in that period.
CNBC reported that the 21-year-old investment firm participated in five large AI funding rounds during the month. The biggest was a $12 billion Series B round for Prometheus, a physical AI startup that CNBC said is valued at about $41 billion.
Prometheus counts Bezos as a cofounder and co-CEO, according to CNBC. Bezos told CNBC’s David Faber on June 11 that the company is trying to build an “artificial engineer” to speed the design and manufacturing of physical products, with possible applications ranging from jet engines to pharmaceuticals.
Bezos said in that CNBC interview that Prometheus is focused on tools that can shorten the time between an idea and a manufactured object. He also said the company has raised more than $18 billion to date because building large datasets requires extensive computing power.
CNBC reported that Bezos Expeditions added four other AI startups to its portfolio through nine-figure funding rounds in June: General Intuition, CuspAI, Generalist and Flourish.
- CuspAI is building AI models for chemistry, and Bezos Expeditions co-led its fundraising, according to CNBC.
- Flourish is developing AI models inspired by the human brain, CNBC reported.
- Generalist is working on AI intended to help robots perform more complex tasks, according to CNBC.
- General Intuition is training spatial AI models using millions of hours of video gameplay, CNBC reported.
Other family offices also appeared in Fintrx’s June deal tracker cited by CNBC. Hillspire, the family office of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, participated in General Intuition’s $320 million Series A, according to CNBC.
The Fintrx tracker listed several other notable family-office investments for the month, according to CNBC. Duquesne Family Office, tied to Stanley Druckenmiller, invested in cell-therapy manufacturing company Cellares; Lauder Partners, tied to Gary Lauder, invested in light-therapy device company Solius; and Pivotal Ventures, founded by Melinda French Gates, invested in Forage, a food-stamp payment processing company.
Bezos has publicly played down fears that AI investment has become overheated. In a May CNBC interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, Bezos said that even if AI proves to be a bubble, he believed the investment surge would still finance useful companies and technologies.
In that interview, Bezos said investors had not yet learned to separate strong AI ideas from weak ones, CNBC reported. He argued that successful investments could outweigh losses from companies that fail.
This story draws on original reporting from CNBC.