Travis Kalanick launches a new company called Atoms focused on robotics

Travis Kalanick launches a new company called Atoms focused on robotics

Uber founder Travis Kalanick has a new company called Atoms focused on robotics that, according to its web site, will function in the meals, mining, and transportation industries.

Kalanick is rolling his present ghost kitchen company, CloudKitchens, into Atoms. It’s not instantly clear how he plans to deal with mining and transportation. Atoms’ web site says it would build a “wheelbase for robots,” and Kalanick said in a live interview with TBPN on Friday that his company will apply this wheelbase to “specialized robots” — not humanoids.

“Humanoids have their place, but there’s a lot of room for specialized robots that do things in an efficient, sort of industrial-scale kind of way, which is sort of where we play,” he said.

To assist the mining enterprise, Kalanick said Friday that he’s on the precipice of buying Pronto, the autonomous car startup focused on industrial and mining websites that was created by his former Uber colleague, Anthony Levandowski. Kalanick revealed Friday that he’s already the “largest investor” in Pronto.

“The industrial thing is sort of like, probably, our main jam,” Kalanick told TBPN. Kalanick demurred on the thought of utilizing Atoms robots to maneuver people, no less than in the near-term. “Once you crack movement in the physical world, there’s lots of people who want access to that.”

Earlier Friday The Information reported Kalanick was getting again into self-driving autos with “major backing” from Uber, and that he has reportedly told people he “wants to be more aggressive in rolling out self-driving technology than Waymo.” Uber didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark. Atoms’ web site makes no point out of Uber. The Information first reported Kalanick was discussing buying Pronto.

Last yr, Kalanick was said to be curious about shopping for the U.S. arm of Chinese self-driving car company Pony AI with backing from Uber, though The Information said Friday that those talks ended.

Kalanick resigned from Uber in 2017 after a confluence of crises at the ride-hail company. At the time, the company was affected by complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination, which sparked an exterior investigation that resulted in more than 20 staff being fired.

Before that, Kalanick had created a self-driving division at Uber in 2015. Levandowski performed a big position in that project after Kalanick lured him away from Google. Uber was in the end sued by Google for stealing secrets and techniques associated to its personal self-driving automobile project (which ultimately turned Waymo). The two corporations settled, however Levandowski was criminally charged and sentenced to 18 months in jail for his position in the affair. The engineer obtained a last-minute pardon from President Trump at the end of his first time period.

The company stored working on the project after Kalanick resigned, including after one in all its check autos struck and killed a pedestrian in 2018. Kalanick’s successor, Dara Khosrowshahi, shuttered and bought the division to autonomous trucking company Aurora in 2020.

In a uncommon interview in March 2025, Kalanick expressed remorse that Uber had deserted growing its personal self-driving automobiles.

This story has been up to date to replicate new data from Atoms’ web site and an interview with Kalanick.

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