Elon Musk reacts as Jeff Bezos enters AI race with $6.2 billion startup: ‘Copycat’

Elon Musk has accused Jeff Bezos of being a “copycat” after the Amazon billionaire entered the AI race

Published on: Nov 18, 2025, 04:46:18 IST

By Sanya Jain

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Elon Musk has accused Jeff Bezos of being a “copycat” after the Amazon billionaire entered the AI race. Bezos is backing a new AI startup called Project Prometheus and will return to the trenches as co-CEO, The New York Times reported, citing several sources familiar with the project.

Elon Musk accused Jeff Bezos of being a 'copycat' (File Photo)

Project Prometheus has raised $6.2 billion in funding, partly from Bezos himself.

This will be the first time that Jeff Bezos will return to an executive position since stepping down as the CEO of Amazon in 2021. He will share the position of CEO of Project Prometheus with Vik Bajaj, co-founder of Verily and Foresite Labs.

Elon Musk reacts

Elon Musk, founder of AI firm xAI and one of the early backers of OpenAI, reacted to the news with amusement.

“Haha no way,” he wrote on the social media platform X, adding the words “copy” and an emoji depicting a cat.

This would hardly be the first time that Musk has taken a crack at Bezos. He has already called his rival a “copycat” twice – once when Bezos' Amazon announced plans to launch internet-beaming satellites in competition with Musk’s SpaceX, and then again when Amazon acquired self-driving car company Zoox to take on Musk's Tesla.

What will Project Prometheus do?

According to the startup’s LinkedIn page, it will focus on “AI for the physical economy”.

The startup will build AI products for engineering and manufacturing in various fields like computers, aerospace, and automobiles, according to the NYT report.

The startup is already functional with over 100 staff members, including AI researchers from companies like Meta, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind.

Over the past few years, especially after ChatGPT’s breakout in late 2022, the AI race has transformed into one of the most significant battlegrounds in tech. Meta, Microsoft, Google have all made big bets on AI.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sanya Jain
Sanya Jain is an Assistant Editor with Hindustan Times Digital. She has nearly a decade of experience in covering offbeat stories that speak to the everyday experience - from viral videos to human interest copies that spark conversation. Her interests stretch across business, pop culture, social media trends, entertainment and global affairs. Before joining Hindustan Times, Sanya spent two years with Moneycontrol and five years with NDTV. She holds an undergraduate degree in English literature from St Stephen’s College, Delhi, and a master’s in journalism from the Xavier Institute of Communications, Mumbai. Sanya has a sharp eye for spotting emerging trends and looking for newsworthy angles to elevate viral posts into meaningful narratives. She was the first one, for example, to cover Narayana Murthy’s remark on 70-hour work weeks that sparked a national conversation. She is equally at ease writing about business leaders as about the common man, about issues of national importance and memes that amuse social media. Sanya enjoys speaking with content creators, newsmakers and entrepreneurs to transform everyday moments into engaging, slice-of-life stories that resonate with readers. When she is not working, Sanya can be found curled up with a good book. Born and raised in Lucknow, she has spent the last several years in Delhi. She is deeply interested in animal welfare and now spends a lot of her time running after her destructive orange cat.Read More

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