Prometheus brings back Bezos

Top News

• Prometheus Unstealthed: We don’t know a ton about the newly-announced AI startup “Project Promotheus” yet except for one big, attention-grabbing headline: The co-CEO will be Amazon founder and world’s richest man candidate Jeff Bezos. Prometheus is starting out with an alleged $6.2 billion in funding — some provided by Mr. Bezos — and marks the first time he’ll serve in an operational role at a company since stepping down as Amazon chief in 2021. (He’s only listed as a founder at Blue Origin, not in the C-suite, in case you were about to write us an angry reply.) So what does Prometheus… do? Unclear so far, though it’s something to do with using AI to improve engineering and manufacturing, particularly as it concerns computers and vehicles. With Bezos at the helm, the media is paying close attention, so we should know some more pretty soon.

• Runlayer exits stealth: The startup makes it easier and more effective for other companies to interact with the open-source Model Context Protocol (or MCP), first introduced by Anthropic back in November 2024. MCP has become something of a standard for companies building AI agents, allowing them to connect with third party systems independently, but it has widely reported security vulnerabilities. That has birthed an entire niche of products adding a safety later to MCPs, allowing companies to integrate agents into their workflow without risking their precious data. Runlayer plans to differentiate itself from this rapidly growing field by adding a lot of tools and features, making it an “all-in-one security tool.” The company comes from three-time founder Andrew Berman (Nanit and Vowel), and raised $11 million in seed funding from Keith Rabois of Khosla Ventures, Felicis, and others.

• A surge of PowerLattice: MORE POWER is not just Tim Allen’s memorable “Home Improvement” catchphrase, but the mantra of AI companies throwing fresh GPUs into their data centers faster than they can charge them. The most common response has been the most obvious: build more power plants! But PowerLattice, a startup from a group of electrical engineering vets, is taking the opposite approach: reducing the power that chips require to run AI applications. After two years of R&D, they’ve already collaborated with TSMC on “chiplets” that are now in testing. The startup emerged from stealth this week with a $25 million Series A round; it has raised $31 million so far.

TWiST 500

We had Ramp CEO Eric Glyman on the pod just last month, and had a great chat about all the conclusions to be drawn from their research data. (Check it out in E2192 here!) But one thing he DIDN’T mention was that the company was in the midst of a pretty epic fundraise. The financial management app for companies raised a fresh $300 million round at a valuation of $32 billion. That’s DOUBLE their valuation from June of this year.

The passionate interest around Ramp is not terrifically difficult to understand. The company is now pulling in $1 billion in annualized revenue, up from $500 million in 2024. Glyman also tells Bloomberg that they have over 50,000 total clients, including 2,000 firms spending more than $100K or more each year. Better still, much of their recent, rapid growth has been powered by new features and products.

But even as we celebrate one TWiST 500 company’s achievements, it’s time to say goodbye to another… Replicate, which made it easier for developers to deploy and run AI models in the cloud via simple APIs, is being acquired by the cloud services provider, Cloudflare. According to Cloudflare’s blog, current Replicate users will find their APIs and workflows uninterrupted, and their catalog of 50,000 open-source and fine-tuned models will get a major boost in effectiveness (not to mention visibility) by joining one of the largest cloud networks in the world. The partnership could seemingly promise a number of benefits, from lower latency AI inference, to cost optimization, to the added simplicity for developers of working with a unified model and compute experience.

Finally, over the weekend, attendees at the Cerebral Valley AI Conference in SF voted on the billion dollar startup they’d most like to SHORT. And the winner was Perplexity, designers of our beloved Comet AI browser. It’s worth noting that this is an informal poll, relying on a relatively small sample size, so it doesn’t mean THAT MUCH. Also the #2 entrant was TWiST 500 kingpins OpenAI. So clearly, being the biggest, best-funded, and most visible AI startups in the world comes with its own set of challenges. – Lon

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This Week in Startups

E2209: Molly Cantillon of Nox stops by the show to debut RPLY, an AI helper that lives in your iMessages and helps you keep up with all your various threads and groupchats. She thinks it’s the first step to an AI-powered future in which an “Invisible OS” monitors our activity all day and intervenes when needed. Then we’re chatting with Gregg Mojica about the state of the art in AI agents, and whether we’re in a “lull” right now. Finally, another TWiST Flashback features a classic 2013 chat with Shopify mastermind Tobi Lutke.

E2208: On TWiST, Alex chats with Ben Schleuniger of Orbital Operations stops by to tell us about using reusable rockets to tow objects into higher orbits than other space startups can reach. The secret? Extremely cold cryo-propellents! Plus we’re looking back on two classic TWiST episodes from the late ‘10s featuring Greg Brockman of OpenAI and Vlad Tenev of Robinhood.

E2207: We’ve got a pair of fresh TWiST 500 interviews for you today. First up, Alex chats with Harvey AI president Gabe Pereyra about why legal work is so perfectly suited to LLMs, and how to charge for legal services when you can get things done in billable minutes, not hours. Then we’ve got OpenRouter CEO Alex Atallah helping us compare and contrast the major LLMs, and noting why evals and benchmarks have become so central to the entire AI industry. Finally, Jason stops by to answer some more Founder Questions from around the Web.

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Investor Networking Lunch in SF

Jason and LAUNCH are hosting an investor networking lunch, followed by pitches from our latest Accelerator batch. We'd love for you to join us for Dim Sum in San Francisco on Friday, December 5th. (Or forward this to your investor friends.)

• Date/Time: Friday, December 5th, 2025 at 12-3PM PT

• Format: Dim sum lunch, followed by founder pitches & investor networking

• Location: TBA (Chinatown area)

Spots are limited, please RSVP here. The LAUNCH team will email you confirmation once your registration is accepted. You must be an accredited investor or work for a VC Fund to join.

We’re Hiring a Program Manager

LAUNCH is seeking a program manager to help organize and manage Founder University and Angel University in Japan. Candidates must be fluent in both English and Japanese, and should plan on splitting their time between Tokyo and our home base in Austin, Texas. If you’re interested in this exciting opportunity, reach out to [email protected]!

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Need a flexible living and working environment in San Francisco? This thoughtfully designed loft-style residence at 787 Bryant St., the heart of the vibrant SOMA district and the city’s creative hub, is now available for rent or purchase. Check the listing for more details.

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