Prometheus, the physical AI startup co-founded by Jeff Bezos and Vik Bajaj, the former co-founder of Verily, Google’s life sciences unit, announced it raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation.

The new funds came from Bezos himself, as well as from JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock, among others.

This is the second fundraise round for Prometheus, which launched late last year with an initial raise of $6.2 billion, according to CNBC.

Prometheus is building what it calls an “artificial general engineer” — software capable of automating the design and manufacturing of complex physical systems, from jet engines to drug compounds.

The ambition is sweeping: replace large swaths of engineering work with AI. Although the startup will automate many aspects of an engineer’s job, Bezos told CNBC that the productivity gains AI delivers will lead to what he calls “labor scarcity” — his term for a world where demand for human workers outpaces supply.

That puts him at odds with a number of prominent voices in tech. While some AI leaders predict widespread job losses, Bezos sees it differently.

“Significant productivity in the economy is going to raise the standard of living,” he said. “People who today have two-earner households, they’ll become one-earner households. Maybe some people who are working overtime will stop working overtime.”

The company, which currently has 150 employees across offices in San Francisco, London, and Zurich, is keeping the specifics of what it has already built under wraps.

Bezos indicated that a large portion of the capital will go toward the company’s large compute needs.

Bezos knows something about labor at scale. Amazon — where he serves as executive chairman and is the largest individual shareholder — employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide and over the past year, under CEO Andy Jassy, has laid off tens of thousands of people as the company has accelerated its own automation push.

At $41 billion, Prometheus is one of the most richly valued AI startups ever funded, and one of the largest single bets on the physical AI sector. But it isn’t the only company attracting massive investor interest. In recent months, venture capitalists have increasingly poured capital into physical AI, a booming sector that investors and founders argue is inherently more defensible than pure software — because the physical world creates moats that code alone cannot.

Data storage security company Cyera is finalizing a round led by Evolution Equity Partners of at least $300 million at a $12 billion valuation, according to four people with knowledge of the deal.

Calcalist was first to report the funding deal, although TechCrunch’s sources added new details about the company and its financials.

Cyera has surpassed $150 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), three people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, though it remains far from profitable. The deal values Cyera at 80 times its ARR, a multiple that’s even higher than investors assign to many fast-growing AI startups.

Sources told TechCrunch the company is spending money faster than it makes it. Some of those costs are directed at hiring sales staff. According to Pitchbook, Cyera has added 500 jobs so far this year.

Cyera’s spokeperson said that “the numbers cited are factually and significantly inaccurate.” Evolution Equity Partners didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The new round is expected to come just five months after Cyera announced that it had raised a $400 million Series F at a $9 billion valuation led by Blackstone with participation from existing investors, including Accel, Coatue, Lightspeed, Redpoint, Sapphire, Sequoia, Cyberstarts, and others. The upcoming round will bring Cyera’s total capital haul to at least $2 billion.

Cyera, which was founded in 2021, has benefited as enterprises turn to its platform to safeguard their data from attackers weaponizing AI. When it announced its Series F, the company claimed its customers comprised one-fifth of the Fortune 500, and its revenue had more than tripled in 2025.

In recent months, the company has used its capital to finance operating losses as well as acquire other cybersecurity startups, including Index Ventures-backed Ryft and a less than one-year-old Genie Security.