Project Prometheus, an artificial intelligence startup co-led by Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj, has acquired the AI company General Agents to bolster its development of manufacturing-focused AI systems. The deal, which closed in June, was first reported by Wired today, though the acquisition price was not disclosed.
The acquisition brings key talent and technology to Project Prometheus, which recently emerged with $6.2 billion in funding from a consortium including Bezos. The company aims to apply AI to physical industries, targeting manufacturing processes for sectors such as automotive, aerospace, and computing.
General Agents was co-founded by Sherjil Ozair, a former researcher at Google DeepMind, and William Guss, previously of OpenAI. The startup developed “Ace,” an autonomous AI agent capable of executing complex tasks on a computer, such as editing videos, transferring data between applications, and navigating booking forms. The company claims Ace has outperformed OpenAI’s own “Operator” agent in certain internal benchmarks.
A key factor in the acquisition appears to be General Agents’ use of “video-language-action” (VLA) architecture for its models. While Ace applied this to digital tasks, VLA models are also critical for robotics, enabling machines to interpret visual data and perform physical actions based on language commands. This technology aligns directly with Project Prometheus’s goal of bringing advanced automation to industrial environments.
Following the acquisition, General Agents’ co-founders and several staff members joined Project Prometheus, expanding the company’s headcount to over 100 employees. The company reportedly plans to adopt a training methodology similar to that of Periodic Labs Inc., using autonomous robotic experiments to generate real-world data for refining its AI models.
