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Jeff Bezos creates A.I. startup where he will be co-chief executive
https://archive.ph/K1sNB https://archive.ph/K1sNB
- code_for_monkey 11mo ago[flagged]
- octoberfranklin 11mo agobezobux
- fragmede 11mo agoThere’s already Amazon store credit for that
- aschobel 11mo ago> The new company has until now kept a low profile, and when it was started is not even clear. Any more details? Where is it located? Who is working there, For $6.2 billion raised I’m surprised their aren’t more details
- sionisrecur 11mo agoIs that a thing in the US? You start a company and there's no need to register it with the government? Or it gets registered but there's no public records of it?
- nicole_express 11mo agoYou can basically form a corporate entity with a nominal Delaware office, but it doesn't need to give any details about where the actual work takes place, yeah.
- reactordev 11mo agoYou can even LegalZoom one for $200.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- Aurornis 11mo agoAll companies are registered. They have to be registered to be legal entities, have bank accounts, and comply with tax laws. Private companies don’t need to publicly divulge a lot, though. It’s between the company and their investors. It’s only once a company wants to trade publicly that they have to provide a lot of public details and financials.
- trollbridge 11mo agoYou don’t have to register a general partnership as long as it has one of the partners’ last name in the partnership name, although I guess you have to get an EIN to file partnership taxes. A sole proprietorship doesn’t have to register anything ever at all.
- Aurornis 11mo agoGreat point. I suppose I should have said all companies like this (the corporation Bezos is involved with) are registered entities. There are ways to do business activities yourself without registering an official business, though it’s generally discouraged because forming an LLC is so cheap and easy and provides some protections and benefits.
- SoftTalker 11mo agoAlthough in most cases it’s sensible to register a single member LLC instead of operating as a sole proprietor. That way the LLC can be separate from the owner’s personal assets.
- paxys 11mo agoThere are thousands of companies registered every day across the US. This one is probably a subdivision of a subdivision of some holding company owned by Bezos. Pretty much impossible to track using just public data.
- trollbridge 11mo agoIn my state, zero information is given to the state about who the owners are.
- SirFatty 11mo agoLet me guess: Texas?
- trollbridge 11mo agoNope. TX actually has quite a bit more transparency. One of the more absurd things I can do is have two LLCs own each other, and then have outside management.
- haneefmubarak 11mo agoWyoming?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- limagnolia 11mo agoA company can be a sole proprietership or partnership without registering with anyone, but in this case in most states they must either conduct business in the owners/partners names or register a DBA with the state(s) they are doing business in. (the rules are state specific, and I think there are some states that don't do kr require DBA registration). In most cases, a company with billions invested in it will be formed as a formal entity such as an LLC or Corporation in a state. Again, the specifics vary from state to state. If you knew the legal name of this entity, and what syate it was registered in, you could probably look up when it was registered in that state. However, details like owners and organizers aren't always Available. It gets further complicated with Series LLCs. Congress passed a law that would have required "beneficial ownership" registration with law enforcement (FinCen), however, this registration would not have been public. Further, it was found unconstitutional and enforcement of the registration requirement indefinitely suspended. In general, if you are doing business in a state under a name or entiry other than your own legal name, you will be required to file something with the state, and that filing will include a registered agent where legal process can be served on the business, and this information will be public. But if they aren't doing business publicly yet, no one will know the name of the business, so they can't look it up! It sounds like the name mentioned in the article may just be a code name.
- dmux 11mo agoInteresting. If one were to legally change their name to their desired DBA name, I wonder how that would go over.
- limagnolia 11mo agoLegal name changes are handled in state courts, so there may be different rules depending on your state, but generally I think you could get away with it if you really wanted to... but doing business as a sole proprietor means you are personally liable for everything the business does. Way simpler and better to just form an LLC in most cases.
- freehorse 11mo ago$6.2 billion which are prob to be invested in amazon to be invested in the startup to be invested in amazon, so I would not assume such an amount actually implies the size where this would be surprising.
- stock_toaster 11mo agoMore circular financing to keep the AI house of cards from falling?
- weird-eye-issue 11mo agoYeah since there isn't any actual real spend going into AI...
- hn_throwaway_99 11mo agoI don't think many of us are questioning the real spend going into AI - it's the return on that spend that we're wondering about.
- weird-eye-issue 11mo agoThere is pretty concrete published data that shows trends in less hiring for roles that are easily replaced by AI such as content writers and front-end developers Personally I let go a developer I was using because I only had them around for front end work and now I'm much more productive just doing that with Claude Code directly So the returns for the average business are largely due to less employee and contractors spending
- overfeed 11mo ago> There is pretty concrete published data that shows trends in less hiring Is there any concrete evidence that lower hiring is due to AI, and not due to some other factor - such as a stalling economy? I suspect AI growth is the only thing currently staving off a full-blown recession.
- skeeter2020 11mo agoQ: could this be an "experiment" in AI financing? i.e. he's bankrolled 6.2B, then strategic quasi-purchases and cross investments will multiply that money without ever needing to spend it on anything - except AWS hosting of course
- bfeynman 11mo agobased on linkedin it looks like they took a failed company thats existed for a year "General agents" which had what just looked like a single browser agent and now have rebranded that.
- jordanb 11mo ago> Co-Chief Executive In other words he wants to seagull manage the place.
- davidw 11mo agoPrometheus? Eagles > seagulls...
- elAhmo 11mo agoWants all the power without actually doing the CEO's job. Quite ridiculous, similarly how there were two heads of "DOGE" or Twitter having Linda Yaccarino as the CEO.
- tempodox 11mo agoLinda had an important role as the Chief Bag Holder in case things went bad.
- rickdeckard 11mo ago"I bring the money, so I have the last word on everything. Now talk."
- nprateem 11mo agoNot many people can do the "Just-do-what-Musk-does" playbook, but this will no doubt be a good little bunse for him.
- djtango 11mo agoIf there were a founder I believed who could, it would be Jeff B
- radial_symmetry 11mo agoThe fact that Amazon hit it big twice under him (retail and then web services) speaks volumes. Hard to pretend he just got lucky.
- baobabKoodaa 11mo agoSo we now have one AI startup run by Jeff Bezos and another AI startup run by Beff Jezos. What a weird timeline.
- reactordev 11mo agoExpect a third soon. Bezos really wants to have another hit.
- epicureanideal 11mo agoI think it’s great that there will be more competition in the space, not to mention more hiring, etc.
- baobabKoodaa 11mo agoI wasn't referring to Amazon. There's actually another person called "Beff Jezos" who runs an AI startup called Extropic.
- googlywoogly 11mo agoAmazon itself has become so corrupted and disfunctional that all of their internal AI efforts amount to just burning billions for bottom-of-the-barrel results[0]. I'm not surprised that 5 person startups are building better AI products than all of Amazon, or that Bezos decided to start an AI company outside of Amazon. [0]https://labs.amazon.science/ https://labs.amazon.science/
- octoberfranklin 11mo agoIt's really not surprising. AWS is definitely absolutely now in the category of "too big to fail". And the fact that there's an entire AWS region for US government classified stuff just underscores that. Becoming TBTF has a very corrosive effect on organizations.
- baobabKoodaa 11mo agoI wasn't referring to Amazon as the other AI startup. I was referring to another guy who is known by the name "Beff Jezos", who runs Extropic.
- ares623 11mo agoIn the fires of Mount Doom, a 6th frontier lab was secretly forged. For none could resist being a CEO of an AI startup before the music stops.
- tempodox 11mo agoWhen you’re rich, you can even buy vanity CEO roles.
- ankit219 11mo agoOpenai, deepmind, anthropic, xai. who is the fifth frontier lab?
- ripped_britches 11mo agoFAIR (I mean MSI) or grab bag of other runner ups
- tintor 11mo agoMicrosoft Advanced AI Research
- kilroy123 11mo agoHonestly, why? Why not just focus on Blue Origin? I don't get this new Musk-like tendency to run multiple ventures instead of focusing on one very tough mission.
- andsoitis 11mo agoIt takes extraordinary skill to successfully juggle multiple ventures. So it is natural for some to want to take on the challenge. I think it is pretty impressive.
- gedy 11mo agoMaybe he has this skill, but I also know a lot of folks who like to have the control and glory, but don't want to put in the time basically.
- datadrivenangel 11mo agoAnd he's not juggling Blue Origin that well given the delays. Still impressive to go to space, so the man deserves credit, but it likely would have been several years faster and billions less if he had been more involved.
- ramraj07 11mo agoBy pure nature of how companies work, a space company with this mandate and so much funding, unless its being used for money laundering, will have a modicum of progress. BO has barely had that. No space company with so much money and so much runway has achieved so little.
- HAL3000 11mo ago> It takes extraordinary skill to successfully juggle multiple ventures. That's a myth. I've done that, and I know a lot of people who do that. Do you think Musk is writing sparse attention code for Grok? Does he even know how Grok's architecture works under the hood? Or that he designed the data centers? I mean, you delegate stuff. The only hard thing is getting the right people, but if you're a hyped up billionaire, it's easy mode because you can pay a lot, and people want to work for you. You just create an environment where they can achieve things. There are times when the majority of your work is simply attending public meetings, podcasts, and doing interviews. People really overestimate what's involved in the work of a billionaire CEO. The people actually making things happen in space industry or AI work harder, longer, and solve more complex problems than any CEO and in some cases they need to work hard against the CEOs to actually make things happen.
- andsoitis 11mo agoFrom the TechCrunch article; > its work will resemble that of Periodic Labs, which is building technology to speed up scientific research by simulating the physical world to train AI models. Will be interesting to see how far simulation gets you vs actual embodiment via robots, etc.
- johnnyApplePRNG 11mo agoI think it's actually going to be healthy for the ecosystem on the whole. The more competition, the better.
- ACCount37 11mo agoIf you believe that rushing capabilities ASAP is the right call, that is.
- randycupertino 11mo agoI feel like he's too distracted by his celebrity lifestyle these days to really focus on running a company. He just paid for Kris Jenner's 70th birthday party at his house where they had the cops called on them: https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/kris-jenner-jeff-bezos-birthday-party-beverly-hills-police/ https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/kris-jenn... and he disinvited Elon Musk (lol): https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/celebrity/articles/elon-musk-snubbed-kris-jenner-084154628.html https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/celebrity/articles/elon-... Here he is out showboating at the Oscars, Vanity Fair parties, the white house, in Hollywood, in Monaco, Paris Fashion Week, Sun Valley, Milan, NYC, various galas all in the last year: https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-fashionable-year-outfit-photos-2025#ahead-of-the-oscars-the-couple-attended-a-celebrity-dinner-in-matching-black-outfits-4 https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-lauren-sanchez-fa...
- sva_ 11mo agoPretty gossipy
- chemotaxis 11mo agoI don't want to be mean, but to be honest, your post makes me wonder if you are too distracted by the celebrity lifestyle (of others). I don't have this treasure trove of information about Bezos' life and I don't think it makes me any less informed about the world?
- randycupertino 11mo agoHaha.. busted. I do enjoy fashion blogs (specifically Tom and Lorenzo https://tomandlorenzo.com/ https://tomandlorenzo.com/) and always notice Bezos out galavanting around at the events they post!
- NewsaHackO 11mo agoBeing a celebrity doesn't sound like it would take that much time, especially for someone like him who probably just is physically present for things and leaves all planning to others. In fact, being coCEO is probably literally just more of the same to him.
- googlywoogly 11mo agoAmazon itself has become so corrupted and disfunctional that all of their internal AI efforts amount to just burning billions for bottom-of-the-barrel results[0]. I'm not surprised that 5 person startups are building better AI products than all of Amazon, or that Bezos decided to start an AI company outside of Amazon. [0]https://labs.amazon.science/ https://labs.amazon.science/
- awillen 11mo agoA lot of negative posts here, but AI to advance science seems like basically the best possible use case. The more ultrawealthy people who want to throw billions at it, the better.
- davidw 11mo agoIt depends on how much they're actually doing in the service of science, and how much is "flashy AI stuff". I don't have a lot of hope that it's the former, to be honest. These people have burned up all their goodwill.
- amlib 11mo agoWasn't OpenAI also for the embetterment of society? Looking at how things went for all high profile AI companies, why should we trust this one? Even if they got a saint to run as CEO they would find a way to screw humanity over.
- michaelbuckbee 11mo agoNotably, Amazon has already invested $8 billion in Anthropic/Claude, so I'm hoping this is actually something wildly different and with a different approach.
- afavour 11mo agoCo-CEO. So he gets to boast about being CEO of an AI company at dinner parties while leaving someone else to do the actual work.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- surgical_fire 11mo ago> CEO > actual work Doesn't compute.
- duxup 11mo agoValue I think is debatable. But most every CEO I have met is the workaholic type.
- cosmotic 11mo agoDoing work isn't necesearily value, and value depends on perspective.
- duxup 11mo agoLike I said, value is debatable.
- Moto7451 11mo agoI’ve met both. Even when I disagree with them I appreciate the ones that actually put the work in. Most recently I’ve worked with a string of them that barely understand how their companies make money and certainly couldn’t do any of the actual jobs there. Performance is independent from them being on the payroll.
- ares623 11mo agoThe Amazon Prime Video approach
- rsynnott 11mo agoIs "A.I." NYT house style? Looks rather jarring.
- palmotea 11mo ago> Is "A.I." NYT house style? Looks rather jarring. I think their style is to use periods for acronyms, which I believe is traditional. A quick scan of their recent headlines turns up "U.S", "A.I.", "A.T.M.", "ICE", "L.P.G.A.", "REI", "U.K." I don't know what the reasoning behind the use of "ICE" and "REI" is, could be a mistake or a judgement that those words are tend to not be understood as acronyms, or something else.
- 0xffff2 11mo agoIIRC they used to always style "NASA" as "N.A.S.A." even though the agency itself never uses periods and is of course always pronounced as a word rather than initials. (This particular example stuck in my mind just because I work there). Hopefully "ICE" and "REI" reflect a change in that style to omit periods when referring to organizations that omit the periods in their own style guides.
- rekenaut 11mo agoI don’t think this has been true for the vast majority of NASA’s existence. [This 1966 NYT article about Gemini](https://www.nytimes.com/1966/03/20/archives/gemini-8-mishap-traced-by-nasa-to-short-circuit-defective-thruster.html https://www.nytimes.com/1966/03/20/archives/gemini-8-mishap-...), [this 1986 article about Challenger](https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/22/us/nasa-had-solution-to-key-flaw-in-rocket-when-shuttle-exploded.html https://www.nytimes.com/1986/09/22/us/nasa-had-solution-to-k...), and [this 2010 article about Constellation](https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/science/space/27nasa.html https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/science/space/27nasa.html) all omit periods. Even if NYT did stylize it as “N.A.S.A.” in its earliest articles, this would not diverge from common agency practice early on. For instance, in [this official reel about the dedication of Marshall Space Flight Center](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fasslw4MvE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fasslw4MvE), it is pronounced spelled-out as four letters.
- Aeroi 11mo agoJeff Bezos as a CO-CEO sounds like a corporate structure recipe for disaster.
- jeanlucas 11mo agoWhy?
- gdiamos 11mo agoHow do they break ties?
- kirubakaran 11mo agoDip said ties in liquid nitrogen and hit them with a hammer
- swaits 11mo agoIt’s pretty common sentiment with senior level Amazonians that Uncle Jeff was a great leader. Many lament his departure and loathe his replacement. Lifestyle distractions aside, Bezos playing any kind of CEO role is probably a good thing.
- ignoramous 11mo agohttps://archive.is/ZhmTd https://archive.is/ZhmTd
- trollbridge 11mo agoWell, at least it won’t be a fake nonprofit… I hope.
- slimebot80 11mo agoWell, Elon gets enormous amounts of tax dollars enabling him to move resources around between his investments. The billionaires aren't differentiable.
- kirubakaran 11mo ago> The billionaires aren't differentiable Probably because they're not continuous?
- outside1234 11mo agoHe saw all of the grifting at OpenAI and said to himself: "I can do that!"
- octoberfranklin 11mo agoI don't get the downvotes. This is a case of the simplest explanation being the most likely one.
- cjbarber 11mo agoRecap for those before the paywall: New AI co, Bezos as co-CEO (alongside Vik Bajaj, ex-Google X) $6.2b in funding Nearly 100 employees AI + real world scientific experiments, for the engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles and spacecraft
- crote 11mo agoIn what world is that still a startup!? I thought startup was supposed to mean "we're still starting up our business", but it sounds like the meaning these days is closer to "we are setting piles of cash on fire".
- laidoffamazon 11mo agoI have a weird sense that this is a way to get his kids that are technical into a family business without having them work at a company that isn't considered prestigious
- paxys 11mo ago> Called Project Prometheus What is it about tech people and being unable to come up with original names? Every company I have worked for has had two dozen internal tools and projects called "Prometheus".
- skeeter2020 11mo agosetting aside the AWS DB offerring I've done 2 "Project: Aurora" in the past 3 years, and a bonus project "Audite" (make sure you say it correctly when execs are around!) Look, I'm all for "big bets" but when the majority of time and effort goes into the naming, kick-off and t-shirt design, this ain't it.
- gessha 11mo ago> Project “Audite” Reminds me of Matt Levine joking about walking into a hedge fund with a SEC jacket memorabilia.
- vxvrs 11mo agoI wonder what the dynamic between this and the Amazon Alexa team will look like, if there will be any in the first place...
- doe88 11mo agoDespite the critiques that is something worthwhile I can understand, maybe there is a time in your life you want to be involved in something big, but not 100% like you were at your prime you have the opportunity to do it, so why not. You remain engaged. I prefer seeing that than doing nothing of something useless.
- bathtub365 11mo agoAt this point I prefer these big tech CEOs just be involved in whatever is least damaging to society.
- pinkmuffinere 11mo agoI think that’s a very mature, realistic take. Personally, if I was a 60 year old billionaire, I’d probably be having a series of long vacations or chilling in my yacht. It’s cool that bezos is still trying.
- chistev 11mo agoMaybe you wouldn't. Maybe you'd find it difficult to walk away from the lifestyle that made you a billionaire in the first place.
- pinkmuffinere 11mo agoMaybe! I certainly hope so. But if my life thus far is any indication, I do enjoy working hard but also have to fight _really_ hard to not slip into laziness, even though it makes me less happy. Something about the delayed gratification of doing hard things -- there is a ton of gratification, but my monkey brain hates the delay.
- insane_dreamer 11mo agoYAAS (Yet Another AI Startup). Yawn.
- MrCoffee7 11mo agohttps://archive.ph/K1sNB https://archive.ph/K1sNB
- breakpointalpha 11mo agoEveryone knows that the best companies have two CEOs.
- TulliusCicero 11mo agoSeems to be working for Waymo so far, though of course Waymo isn't an independent company.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- rickdeckard 11mo agoWouldn't be surprised if the funding is based on a circular investment of some AI chipset vendor to consume the compute power of the chipsets AWS is buying. "We buy this amount of chips at price xx, you guarantee us utilization in part by investing in an AI company we will create"
- drooopy 11mo agoWhy does it feel like the entire US economy at the moment is supported by 5-6 companies constantly moving around a couple of trillion dollars?
- FuckButtons 11mo agoBecause we’re in a bubble.
- SirMaster 11mo agoPeople have been saying we are in a bubble since before covid...
- throwuxiytayq 11mo agoNot sure if that makes the situation better or way worse.
- gigatree 11mo agoYou know can bubbles grow, right?
- chistev 11mo agoWhich means a bigger burst.
- estimator7292 11mo agoBecause it is
- habosa 11mo agoAnd for his sin of stealing fire from the gods he’ll be chained to a rock and an eagle will eat his liver every day for the rest of eternity.
- ncr100 11mo agoFor the humor, mocked up an Amazon page reflecting this scenario: - - - Human Liver, 14.4 cm Visit Jeff Bezos' Store 3 Stars (1) $14,000,000 Coupon: [ ] Save an extra 5% on your first Subscribe and Save order. In Stock Quantity: 1 ( Subscribe ) Save 5% now and up to 15% on future deliveries SNAP EBT available Delivery every: 1 day (Most common)
- fragmede 11mo agoThe UN doesn’t say that a human life is actually worth $10 million but that’s the number we’re going to use, so the question is as QALY thing how much is a liver transplant worth and it turns out the liver transplant gets you about 25 QALYs, and so running the numbers a liver is only about $3.75 million.
- conartist6 11mo agoJust before the AI bubble goes pop too. I think by my estimates there's three more months left...
- dominikposmyk 11mo agoElon's comment: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1990479697793491195 https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1990479697793491195
- Yonaferza 11mo ago[flagged]
- barrenko 11mo agoEngineers were modeled after him?
- drweevil 11mo agoI read "co-defendant" for a second there. Oh well.
- mixxit 11mo agoEverything from A to I