Key takeaways
Jeff Bezos's stealth AI venture, Project Prometheus, has quietly acquired General Agents, an agentic computing startup that develops AI systems capable of autonomously controlling computers and automating complex tasks.
Wired first reported the deal on November 26, 2025.
The acquisition emerged from an off-the-record AI dinner in early June at Saison, a two-Michelin-star restaurant in San Francisco.
Tech entrepreneur Vik Bajaj, who co-leads Project Prometheus with Bezos, hosted the event, which included Sherjil Ozair, founder and CEO of General Agents, who had previously worked at DeepMind and Tesla.
Corporate filings obtained by Wired show that Bajaj formed an acquisition entity the morning after the dinner. Four days later, General Agents merged with the Bezos-backed venture. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The technology behind the acquisition
General Agents developed Ace, described as a real-time computer pilot that can take over any computer and execute tasks based on user prompts.
In demonstration videos, the system downloads images from Google and sends them via iMessage in under 15 seconds.
Harsha Abegunasekara, CEO of competing startup Donely, acknowledged the significance of General Agents' technical achievement.
"What General Agents really cracked early on is speed—Ace runs on your computer at lightspeed," Abegunasekara said. "We've been working on that for six months and haven't achieved it yet."
Abegunasekara also noted the strategic importance of the acquisition. "There is something important there for Prometheus to get the entire company," he said.
According to the General Agents' website, the company's mission was to "liberate humanity from digital labor."
The site stated: "Many routine tasks require only minimal cognitive effort, e.g., filling forms, copying and pasting information from one tool to another, or making and sending reports. Human workers continue to be responsible for many tedious tasks that artificial intelligence is already capable of performing."
General Agents' website indicates that at least two custom foundation models power Ace, called ace-control-small and ace-control-medium.
Job postings suggest these models are based on a video-language-action architecture, typically used for developing AI models for robots, which aligns with Project Prometheus's reported focus on manufacturing applications.
Bezos returns to operational leadership
Project Prometheus represents Bezos's first formal operational role since stepping down as Amazon CEO in 2021.
The New York Times first revealed the existence of Project Prometheus on November 17, 2025, reporting that Bezos and Bajaj serve as co-CEOs of the venture.
The startup has secured $6.2 billion in funding, with contributions from Bezos himself, making it one of the most well-financed early-stage companies globally.
Project Prometheus has hired nearly 100 employees, including researchers from leading AI firms such as OpenAI, Google DeepMind, and Meta.
Bajaj, a physicist and chemist, previously cofounded Alphabet's health sciences company Verily and worked with Google co-founder Sergey Brin at Google X on projects including Wing and the self-driving technology that became Waymo.
Manufacturing focus and industry implications
Project Prometheus describes itself as building "AI for the physical economy" and is developing AI systems to support manufacturing across computing, automotive, and aerospace sectors.
The company is reportedly focusing on systems that can learn from real-world physical data rather than solely from text-based information like traditional large language models.
Two days after the General Agents acquisition, William Guss, a General Agents cofounder and former OpenAI research scientist who joined Project Prometheus, posted on social media seeking introductions to people in US manufacturing. "I'd love to talk, really trying to understand the space and see some factories :)" Guss wrote.
After the New York Times story was published, Guss, Ozair, and approximately three dozen other people updated their LinkedIn profiles to list their affiliation with Project Prometheus.
Details remain limited
Despite the significant funding and high-profile talent acquisition, many details about Project Prometheus remain undisclosed.
The company's formal name, founding date, and headquarters location have not been publicly identified. The company operates under strict confidentiality agreements, and it has not released any research or publicly described its models.
The General Agents team is now based at Foresite Labs' San Francisco headquarters, a biotech incubator led by Bajaj.
Bezos and Bajaj have previously been connected through Bezos's investments in biotech companies that Bajaj helped start or run, including Grail and Xaira Therapeutics.
General Agents' website and job postings remain online, and new versions of Ace have continued to be released as recently as November 2025, according to public data.
However, how Ace will be integrated into Project Prometheus's broader plans remains unclear.
The acquisition positions Project Prometheus to compete with other tech giants developing computer agent technologies, including OpenAI and Anthropic, as the industry races to build more capable autonomous AI systems for industrial and manufacturing applications.
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