It was supposed to be Jeff Bezos’ highlight moment, but it was disrupted by a cat emoji.
Early this morning, when the news of Bezos personally stepping down to become an AI company had just spread online, Musk quickly tweeted on the X platform, directly @ Bezos, with one sentence attached:
Haha, it’s impossible. Copy cat
If you follow the tech industry, this plot is probably not surprising. From satellites to rockets, these two top leaders in the technology industry have been at odds with each other for a full twenty years. However, nowadays the battlefield of arguments has become the hottest physical AI.
$6.2 billion, Bezos embarks on the biggest entrepreneurial venture in history
In 2021, Bezos handed over the position of Amazon CEO to Andy Jassy, thinking he would focus on becoming a billionaire and enjoying life. Four years later, the king of e-commerce suddenly announced: I want to return to the front line,
The new project he is targeting this time is called Project Prometheus.
According to a report by The New York Times, this plan raised $6.2 billion in initial funding, a significant portion of which was paid for by Bezos himself.
With this huge sum of money, Prometheus launched a “talent rush” in Silicon Valley and has recruited nearly 100 top researchers who previously worked at OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta.
What does Prometheus, who made Bezos choose to start a second business, want to do?
Simply put, it means bringing AI from the virtual world into the real world. Nowadays, AI on the market mainly generates content by learning online text and images. They are good at writing articles, drawing, and chatting, but they have a fatal problem – they don’t understand the physical world.
For example, if you ask ChatGPT “How to design a lighter airplane wing”, it may give you a bunch of theories, but it has never touched a real wing and doesn’t know how different materials behave in a wind tunnel.
What Bezos wants to do is to make AI truly experiment.
It is reported that Prometheus is building a super large automation laboratory in Northern California. In this laboratory, robots will conduct physical, chemical, and engineering tests 24 hours a day without interruption. AI, like scientists, will propose hypotheses, design experiments, observe results, draw conclusions, and continuously iterate and optimize.
The target areas are very clear: aerospace, automotive engineering, and computer hardware manufacturing. For example, in the aviation field, AI can run thousands of wind tunnel simulations on its own to find the optimal wing shape; In automobile manufacturing, AI can plan how robots on the entire production line will collaborate.
In addition, Bezos’ chosen partner is also very interesting: Vik Bajaj.
He is a cross disciplinary scientist with academic backgrounds in physics and chemistry. He was a core member of the mysterious laboratory Google X and participated in the early development of the drone delivery project Wing and the autonomous driving project Waymo. Later, they also founded Verily, a life sciences company under Alphabet. Choosing such a person as the co CEO at least provides a helmsman who can steer the course in terms of technology.
Why does Musk say Bezos is’ plagiarizing ‘?
Musk’s release of ‘Copycat’ is not without reason.
In recent years, Musk has been emphasizing that Tesla has become an AI and robotics company. Now Bezos is also pursuing physical AI and has invested in a bunch of robotics companies. In his view, Bezos’ entry into the fields of physical AI and robotics is more like copying Tesla’s job.
And the enmity between the two has also existed for a long time.
In 2019, Amazon announced its intention to develop the Kuiper satellite project, and Musk immediately called it “Copycat” because SpaceX’s Starlink had been planned as early as 2015.
In the same year, Bezos released the “Blue Moon” lunar lander, and Musk parodied the photo by changing “Blue Moon” to “Blue Balls”. In 2020, Amazon spent $1.2 billion to acquire autonomous driving company Zoox, and Musk tweeted, “@ JeffBezos is a follower.
Looking back, the couple’s bond was formed earlier.
We met for the first time in 2004 and parted ways unhappily. In 2013, they fought fiercely for NASA’s 39A launch pad. In 2014, he filed a patent lawsuit, and in 2021, he went to court again due to the moon landing contract.
However, speaking of which, although the two have been at odds for twenty years, Musk has still shown a certain grace in the face of technological achievements. On November 13th local time, Blue Origin’s New Glenn heavy rocket was successfully launched and successfully recovered the first stage booster in its second flight attempt. Musk also sent his blessings on X in the future.
Whether it’s Bezos’ Prometheus, Musk’s Tesla, or Optimus, they are all doing the same thing: making AI truly understand the physical world and step out of the screen.
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