Jeff Bezos' latest foray into running a billion dollar business has been met with a savage response from rival Elon Musk.
The slinging match began when reports emerged in the New York Times that former CEO Bezos, who stepped back from Amazon four years ago to focus on other projects, had founded a new AI business and appointed himself as co-chief executive.
The secretive AI start-up, named Project Prometheus, aims to provide AI tools for the engineering and manufacturing sectors and has raised a whopping $6.2 billion - despite having no revenue or product to speak of yet.
With this move, it appears that Bezos (net worth $244 billion) is cashing in on the current funding frenzy taking place in the AI sector, two years behind PayPal founder and X owner Elon Musk (net worth $470bn).
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Musk's own business venture in this booming business field, xAI, has itself reportedly been valued at a mind-boggling $200 billion.
This AI company created by the 54-year-old South African businessman is behind the X chatbot Grok and a variety of private services being offered to the US Government, including the Department of War.
Its crazy valuation makes it worth twice as much as oil giant BP, despite only having an estimated gross year-end revenue of $1 billion, some distance behind BP's $189 billion pre-profit income in 2024. By the end of the decade, xAI is forecasted to grow to $14 billion.
This extreme growth and apparent profitability seems to have enticed Bezos back to the role of CEO with Project Prometheus, with the consumer shopping innovator co-founding the company alongside well-regarded tech executive Vik Bajaj, formerly of Google's AI wing.
Musk is convinced Bezos is following in his own footsteps, retweeting news of the Amazon founder's new venture with the comment: "Haha no way. Copy [cat emoji]."
Expert issues AI 'bubble' warning
Little information is available about when Bezos and Bajaj started the company, or when its $6.2 billion funding injection will be realized into an AI product or service.
But what is clear is that Prometheus is entering an increasingly crowded space in the market, as venture capital attempts to own the new and innovative space.
This year, tech companies have sunk $400 billion into AI, with even more funding expected next year.
However, recent turns in global financial markets have started to spook some industry financiers, amid fears that much of the skyrocketing profits and market caps of tech and AI companies could be turning into a bubble.
Farsighted fund manager Michael Burry, of The Big Short fame, has warned that the booming market is likely to be followed by an equally explosive correction, also accusing firms in the sector of creative accounting tricks to 'artificially boost earnings.'
Tech sector giant Nvidia (worth $4.5tn) - which sells computer chips crucial for building many AI models - is now valued at 10 times what they were just two and a half years ago.
Such rapid growth has fueled concerns the AI boom could end up being a 'speculative bubble' that's set to burst.
Topics: Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Artificial Intelligence, Business
William Morgan