Travis Kalanick, the co-founder and former chief executive of Uber, has raised $1.7 billion for Atoms, the industrial robotics venture he has built largely out of public view since leaving Uber in 2017. The round, announced July 22, was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Bain Capital, Fifth Wall and, notably, Uber itself among the backers, according to a16z’s own announcement and reporting from TechCrunch.
From ghost kitchens to heavy industry
Atoms is the holding company Kalanick built from City Storage Systems, the venture he started after Uber’s board pushed him out following a string of workplace-culture scandals. It absorbed CloudKitchens, the ghost-kitchen network that built much of Kalanick’s post-Uber fortune, and Pronto, a heavy-industry automation startup run by former Uber engineer Anthony Levandowski. The company rebranded as Atoms in March, unifying those units under one roof aimed at pushing automation into physical work — food production, logistics, mining and transportation — that software alone can’t reach.
a16z general partner Ben Horowitz, who is joining the Atoms board as part of the deal, said in the firm’s announcement that Kalanick is capable of transforming “old-school, heavy parts of our economy.” Kalanick described the round as “a bit of unfinished business,” framing Atoms’ mission around what he calls “atoms-based computers” — a bid to bring the same intensity of automation to physical industries that software brought to information work, part of a wider physical AI push that has drawn billions into industrial and humanoid robotics this year.
Uber comes full circle
The most striking detail is Uber’s own participation. The company forced Kalanick out as CEO in 2017 after an investor revolt over its workplace culture; nearly a decade later, it is backing his new venture. Atoms says it plans to hire more than 200 people — robotics engineers, machine-learning researchers, data scientists and product staff — across offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, with listed salaries ranging from $125,000 to $280,000.
The round adds to a broader surge in startup funding for robotics and automation in 2026, following large rounds for companies like UK-based Humanoid, as investors bet that AI-driven automation is moving from software into physical labor.