Jeff Bezos Is Putting His Money Behind AI, Meet The Unicorns Earning His Dollars

Jeff Bezos may have lost over $15.2 billion in last Friday’s tech swoon in the stock market. Amazon AMZN shares closed down nearly 9% at $167.90 after the company missed Wall Street’s sales targets. Bezos recently filed plans to sell 25 million shares worth approximately $5 billion. 

Bezos is well accustomed to having his net worth fluctuate with market changes and it doesn’t seem to slow down his spending habits, whether it is his real estate portfolio spread from Seattle to Miami, his $500 million yacht, or his substantial venture capital investments. CNBC recently reported on the investments made by Bezos Expeditions, his family office. Data from FINTRX found that all of his investments this year have been in artificial intelligence. 

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Bezos started the family office in 2005 and through the years it has primarily focused on technology, with 70% of its investments in that camp. As Bezos moves toward artificial intelligence, that may reflect not just his interests but the number of exciting companies starting up in that space and the potential for significant advancements and lots of money. 

One of his investments is Perplexity AI, which builds an AI search engine. It raised $63 million in April, pushing it into unicorn territory with a billion-dollar valuation. Perplexity, which uses a variety of large language models to deliver its results, was recently accused of plagiarism. It has instituted a publisher program to compensate publishers with a share of ad revenue when their content comes up in search results. 

Another unicorn in the Bezos stable is Skikd AI, which works on the operating system for multipurpose robots that can be used everywhere from construction sites and factories to homes. Bezos Expeditions was part of a $300 million funding round that included investments from Coatue, Lightspeed Venture Partners and SoftBank Group. The funding brings the company to a valuation of $1.5 billion.

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The third unicorn may be the biggest of them all, at least so far. Figure raised $675 million in February with support from Bezos and Microsoft MSFT, the OpenAI Startup Fund, Nvidia NVDA, and others. Figure is an AI robotics company that builds humanoid robots. It is collaborating with OpenAI on AI models to create robots that can process and reason from language. Figure and BMW are partnering to bring humanoid robots into automotive production. 

One of the largest AI companies, Anthropic, has received over $4 billion in investments from Amazon. It is big enough now that it is launching its own fund to support new AI talent. Anthropic and Menlo Ventures, a well-established Bay Area venture capital firm, recently announced the Anthology Fund. It will offer financial backing through Menlo Ventures and $25,000 in credits for using its large language models.

All these monster rounds and Bezos's contribution to them may indicate that the most prominent AI companies are yet to hit the market. For stock market investors, most of the opportunities to invest in AI so far have come from established companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Nvidia. While none of the companies above have indicated that they are planning for an initial public offering anytime soon, it seems likely that at least one of them will at some point.

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