Our tittle highlights a provocative angle: "New Way to Steal Your Secrets at Work for AI Training – Just Buy Them Together with Your Company." This appears to be a critical take suggesting that acquiring companies could grant access to proprietary data, trade secrets, processes, or employee knowledge—which might then fuel AI training or optimization. In manufacturing, companies hold vast proprietary datasets on designs, supply chains, material properties, workflows, and more. AI systems like those in Project Prometheus could potentially use this data to train models for better simulation, automation, or predictive engineering. Trained models will be for sale. Your information will be used everywhere including by global competition.
While reports don't explicitly frame it as "stealing secrets," the strategy does involve full ownership post-acquisition, meaning intellectual property, internal know-how, and operational data become part of the fund's assets. Critics (including some commentary tying it to broader concerns about billionaire-led automation displacing workers) might view this as an aggressive way to centralize and monetize industrial knowledge via AI. Proponents see it as necessary to revitalize manufacturing against global competition. Here you go again. China is coming. Run, chicken, run.
“Jeff Bezos is in talks to raise $100 billion for a fund that would buy up manufacturing companies and seek to use AI technology to accelerate their path to automation.
The Amazon.com founder is meeting with some of the world's largest asset managers to raise funding for the project. A few months ago, he traveled to the Middle East to discuss the fund with sovereign wealth representatives in the region. More recently, he went to Singapore to raise funding for the effort, people familiar with the matter said.
The fund, described in investor documents as a "manufacturing transformation vehicle," is aiming to buy companies in industrial sectors such as chipmaking, defense and aerospace. It would dwarf the size of some of the world's largest buyout funds and rival SoftBank's $100 billion, tech-focused Vision Fund.
Bezos was recently appointed co-CEO of Project Prometheus, a new startup that is building artificial-intelligence models that can understand and simulate the physical world. Bezos plans to use the company's technology to boost the efficiency and profitability of businesses owned by the fund, a playbook that some investment firms are deploying in sectors such as accounting and property management.
Project Prometheus is separately in talks to raise as much as $6 billion in funding, people familiar with the matter said. It has appointed David Limp, the CEO of the rocket company Blue Origin, to its board of directors. Bezos founded Blue Origin in 2000 and has contributed billions of dollars a year toward the rocket company.
While much of the AI revolution has been focused on large language models, billions of dollars have begun to flow to companies that are seeking to apply spatially focused AI systems toward industries including robotics and manufacturing.
Language-based AI models are being used to automate software engineering, and leading companies are seeking to boost their use in ways that can also affect knowledge work for finance, real estate and other industries.
Investors have sold off shares of some companies as AI startups such as Anthropic and OpenAI released new tools specifically for those areas. Companies have cited AI in tens of thousands of layoffs in the last year, although some economists have suggested that another rationale for job cuts has been overhiring during the pandemic.
A push toward AI-infused automation is moving through manufacturing-related work, although startups and companies focused on this area are in an earlier stage. While it is unclear the extent to which automation could affect jobs, tech and e-commerce fulfillment companies have been applying that technology in warehouses for years. Amazon, one of the country's largest employers, has closed in on the milestone of having as many robots as humans.
Bezos is the latest among an older generation of Silicon Valley leaders who are thrusting themselves into the AI race.
Former Uber Chief Executive Travis Kalanick announced his venture Atoms, a rebranded expansion of his startup with a vision to transform manufacturing industries with AI.
Elon Musk has also sought to transform Tesla and extolled the company's plans to make humanoid robots with investors.
Bezos became co-CEO of Project Prometheus last year, marking his first formal leadership role at a tech company since stepping down as chief executive of Amazon in July 2021. He remains the chairman of Amazon's board.
Project Prometheus is building AI systems that are able to simulate how the physical world behaves. For example, its technology might be able to simulate how air flows around an airplane wing, or predict exactly where a metal part will crack under pressure. The company intends to initially sell software tools for engineering simulation and design, investor documents show.
Bezos serves as co-CEO alongside Vik Bajaj, a professor at Stanford's School of Medicine who previously co-founded Google's life sciences division, now called Verily. Prometheus has also hired employees from leading AI research labs including OpenAI and Google DeepMind. The company raised $6.2 billion in funding last year.
JPMorgan Chase is also in preliminary talks to back the project through its newly formed Security and Resiliency Initiative, people familiar with the matter said. The investment bank launched a $10 billion fund for the effort in December and hired former Berkshire Hathaway investment manager Todd Combs to help lead the initiative.
The Financial Times earlier reported some details about the Prometheus fundraising.” [1]
1. Bezos Seeks $100 Billion For AI Fund To Escalate Automation. Berber, Jin; Mattioli, Dana; Saeedy, Alexander; Huang, Raffaele. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 20 Mar 2026: A1.
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