Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is reportedly in early discussions to raise a $100 billion fund aimed at acquiring manufacturing companies and using artificial intelligence to accelerate their automation - a move that could reshape entire industrial sectors.
Bezos looks to transform the 'manufacturing vehicle'
Described in investor documents as a "manufacturing transformation vehicle," the fund, WSJ reports, targets companies in major industries including chipmaking, defense, and aerospace. At $100 billion, the fund's size would match SoftBank's Vision Fund and exceed many of the world's largest buyout funds.
Global investor outreach
According to the report, Bezos has in recent months met with large asset managers to raise money for the project, including during trips to the Middle East and Singapore. He traveled to the Middle East to discuss the new fund with sovereign wealth representatives in the region a few months ago.
The Project Prometheus connection
The fund is closely tied to Bezos's stealth AI startup. Project Prometheus was launched in late 2025 with $6.2 billion in funding, and is focused on what insiders describe as 'physical AI' - systems that model real-world environments like factories, machines, and supply chains with high precision. Bezos serves as co-CEO alongside Vik Bajaj, a physicist and former Google X executive, with a team recruited from OpenAI, DeepMind, and Meta. The new manufacturing fund will support that mission by buying up companies that will ultimately use Prometheus' models.
Project Prometheus is separately in talks to raise up to $6 billion in additional funding, according to people familiar with the matter. It recently named David Limp, Blue Origin's CEO, to its board of directors.
The bigger bet on Physical AI
Earlier reporting suggested that Prometheus was already exploring a holding company structure to acquire manufacturers disrupted by AI. That vision has now grown into something far larger.
Bezos has been vocal about the inevitability of automation across industries. "It is going to make their quality go up, and their productivity go up," he said last year. "I mean by every company, I literally mean every company."
The geopolitical angle is hard to ignore - a fund of this size could strengthen domestic manufacturing in critical areas such as semiconductors and defense, at a time when governments are pushing for greater local production capacity.
