Before Marko Bjelonic, cofounder and CEO of AI robotics company Swiss-Mile, met with billionaire Jeff Bezos last April, he sent Bezos his version of an Amazon 6-Pager to pitch his company, hoping it would improve his odds in a video call he expected to feel rushed—but wasn’t. (The 6-Pager is the now-famous document that Bezos required Amazon executives to circulate before strategic meetings in lieu of PowerPoint slides and is known as a key element of Amazon’s culture.) “I was very surprised by how patient he was and how relaxed,” Bjelonic says. The call was scheduled for 30 minutes, but ended up being an hour long. “It felt like a conversation.”

That call led Bezos to co-lead a $22 million funding round in Zurich-based Swiss-Mile in August. The company is developing AI-powered robots that look a bit like wiry, headless dogs with wheels for feet and, later this year, can hopefully deliver items from point to point. It’s currently testing early versions on the streets of Zurich.

Swiss-Mile is one of at least nine companies that got investments from the world’s second richest person in 2024; seven of them are artificial intelligence startups, according to media reports, PitchBook and Preqin data and Forbes research. A representative for Bezos wouldn’t comment. Four of the startups, including Figure AI and Swiss-Mile, are specifically working on AI-powered robotics—a vertical he had not publicly focused on as a venture investor before last year.

Swiss-Mile, a startup that spun out of Swiss university ETH Zurich in 2023, makes autonomous robots that can open doors and handle packages. Bezos invested in the company in August 2024.

While Bezos wouldn’t comment on his investment strategy, billionaire entrepreneurs who typically dip into angel investing are seeing changes coming. In this case, Bezos may think AI-powered robotics is on the cusp of a big commercial breakthrough. “They want to be on the forefront of investing into the type of technology that can be beneficial for their industry,” says Kjartan Rist, founding........

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