Jeff Bezos returns as CEO for new AI startup

PLUS: Use ChatGPT record mode to capture meeting insights

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Four years after leaving Amazon, founder Jeff Bezos is back in the CEO chair — but it’s a new AI startup, not his e-commerce giant, that lured him back to the operations side.

With the AI engineering and manufacturing-focused Project Prometheus already armed with $6.2B in funding and 100 employees from top labs, Bezos is treating physical world intelligence like the next Amazon-sized opportunity.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Jeff Bezos returns to CEO chair for new AI startup

  • xAI’s Grok 4.1 with personality overhaul

  • Use ChatGPT record mode to capture meeting insights

  • Anthropic CEO issues more AI warnings

  • 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

JEFF BEZOS

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is reportedly returning from semi-retirement to co-lead Project Prometheus, a new startup developing AI systems for engineering and manufacturing across computing, aerospace, and automotive sectors.

The details:

  • The NYT reports the startup has already secured $6.2B in funding, with the move also marking Bezos’ first operational role since leaving Amazon in 2021.

  • Project Prometheus will target building AI that learns from the physical world, with advances that complement Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace goals.

  • The startup has reportedly recruited ~100 employees from leading AI labs, including OAI, DeepMind, and Meta, poaching talent for its physical AI focus.

  • Bezos is sharing CEO duties with Vik Bajaj, a physicist who previously worked at Google's moonshot lab and co-founded Verily, Alphabet's life sciences arm.

Why it matters: Despite Bezos’ “retirement”, one of the world’s richest men still has plenty of irons in the fire — and Project Prometheus sounds like one that pairs perfectly with both his areas of expertise and other investments. With massive funding and Bezos’ big reputation and credibility, the startup immediately becomes one to watch.

TOGETHER WITH WARP

The Rundown: Warp, the top-ranked AI terminal loved by over 700K developers, now has Full Terminal Use — with agents integrated into every step of the terminal workflow.

Warp Agents can now:

  • Run interactive programs like debuggers

  • Use full-screen apps like top, vim, and emacs

  • Monitor long-running commands like servers

  • Start in the middle of full-screen programs

See what the next evolution of development agents looks like. Try Warp today.

XAI

Image source: xAI

The Rundown: Elon Musk’s xAI just released Grok 4.1, an upgrade to the startup’s top model that claims to take the top spot across a series of rankings and benchmarks, with a focus on creativity and emotional intelligence over pure reasoning power.

The details:

  • 4.1 achieves the highest emotional intelligence score among tested systems, optimizing for personality traits like empathy and conversational tone.

  • The model rolled out earlier this month to small user groups and under the codename ‘quasarflux’ in LM Arena, ranking No. 1 overall for user preference.

  • xAI also reduced the hallucination rate from 12% to 4% compared to its predecessor, also cutting factual errors by 66% in testing.

  • 4.1 also saw a significant upgrade in creative writing tasks, ranking behind just GPT 5.1 on the Creative Writing v3 benchmark.

Why it matters: Everyone is expecting fireworks from Google this week, but xAI is getting in on the launch party — with a 4.1 update that looks to bring increases in more ‘vibe’ areas like creativity and emotion that can often make even more of an experience upgrade for the average user than pure intelligence or coding improvements.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to record and summarize meetings directly in the ChatGPT desktop app without third-party tools like Fireflies or Otter — perfect for companies that block external recording tools or privacy-sensitive teams.

Step-by-step:

  1. Download the ChatGPT desktop app and log in with a Plus, Pro, Business, or Enterprise account (free accounts don't have full access)

  2. Click the "Record" button during your meeting, lecture, or session, and a recording panel appears and runs quietly in the background (always ask permission before recording others)

  3. Click "Stop" when finished, then send the recording to ChatGPT for a structured breakdown including summary, key points, action items, and suggested follow-ups

  4. Chat with your transcript by asking follow-ups like "Rewrite the summary in bullets for a Slack update" or "Highlight any risks or unanswered questions"

Our Take: With ChatGPT record, you get the convenience of tools like Fireflies/Otter without having to invite an awkward bot into every Zoom call.

PRESENTED BY IBM

The Rundown: Businesses face many challenges going from AI ambition to implementation. Success requires more than adopting new technology. It involves intentionally aligning AI with workflows, data, and goals. As AI evolves into a business-wide opportunity, leaders must ensure the right AI is applied to the right challenges.

Explore IBM's playbook on 3 challenges & approaches to boost agentic AI impact:

  • Finding your AI problem

  • Creating a clear AI plan

  • Integrating AI with the tools you use every day

ANTHROPIC

Image source: CBS

The Rundown: In a recent CBS interview, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said AI can find cures for diseases and double the human lifespan, but also warned of massive job loss, misuse of the tech, and societal decisions being made by a few major companies.

The details:

  • Amodei believes in a “compressed 21st century” that results in 10x the rate of progress, including breakthroughs like cancer cures or Alzheimer’s prevention.

  • Amodei said he is “deeply uncomfortable” with AI decisions resting in the hands of a few executives, calling for “responsible and thoughtful” regulation.

  • The CEO reiterated that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, a shift that will be “broad” and “faster” than with previous advancements.

  • When asked "who elected you and Sam Altman," Amodei responded “no one," saying without legislation it’s “up to the companies to police themselves.”

Why it matters: Anthropic continues to be the most vocal of the AI labs when it comes to both safety and regulation, but Amodei denies it’s just “theater” for positive branding. While it’s tough to parse the authenticity of the AI leader’s warnings as they continue to accelerate forward anyway, it’s clear a massive period of change is coming.

QUICK HITS

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*Sponsored Listing

DeepMind unveiled WeatherNext 2, a weather forecasting AI that generates predictions 8x faster and can simulate hundreds of possible weather shifts in a minute.

OpenAI’s VP of research, Jerry Tworek, posted that “a better version” of the model that won gold at the IMO 2025 is set to be released in the coming months.

OpenAI led a $15M seed investment in Red Queen Bio, a startup developing AI-powered defenses against bad actors using the tech to create biological weapons.

Cloudflare acquired Replicate, bringing its 50k+ model catalog and fine-tuning tools to its Workers platform while maintaining Replicate's existing APIs and community.

NVIDIA dropped Apollo, a family of open-source physics models to accelerate industrial simulations in domains like automotive, aerospace, and climate forecasting.

Google rolled out new AI-powered travel planning features in Search, including Canvas for custom itineraries, an expanded Flight Deals tool, and agentic booking.

COMMUNITY

Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.

Today’s workflow comes from reader J.P. in Kansas City, KS:

"Using Daniel Miessler's Personal AI Infrastructure project as a template, I've used Claude Code to build out an A.I. Assistant named Chiggers that correlates data from various sources to help both manage and surface areas that need attention.

Chiggers plans progressive workouts, analyzes and correlates blood sugar/insulin intake/supplements/food logs to bring insights about managing diabetes, helps with budget planning and holes in my finances, investment opportunities, and much more. This would have taken me a year to build on my own. Claude did it in about 4 days."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

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