Travis Kalanick's Robotics Company Raises $1.7 Billion with a16z Participation

Robotics company Atoms, owned by Travis Kalanick (co-founder of Uber), has closed a $1.7 billion funding round. Lead investor was Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), whose co-founder Ben Horowitz will join the Atoms board of directors. The round also included Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, and Uber—the latter notable because this company fired Kalanick as CEO in 2017 amid scandals. Atoms is a rebrand of the holding company built on the Cloud Kitchens project, which Kalanick developed after leaving Uber. In March of this year, he announced the acquisition of Pronto, an industrial automation company led by his former colleague Anthony Levandowski. Kalanick also stated his intention to pursue mining using Atoms, expanding the functionality of Pronto's existing solutions. Previously, there were reports of negotiations to buy the U.S. division of Pony AI, but according to The Information, these have concluded. In his post on X, Kalanick did not disclose specific plans but noted that this round marks "the completion of the bits-to-atoms story started at Uber and CloudKitchens." He added that he wants to build a "wheelbase for robots," and a significant portion of the funds will go toward hiring employees working in AI and robotics.