Uber founder Travis Kalanick rebrands existing venture to Atoms with focus on robotics
Uber’s cofounder and former CEO, Travis Kalanick, emerged from eight years of stealth with a new company, Atoms, which is a rebranded version of his ghost kitchen operator CloudKitchens. The new company houses some new business verticals, too, including robotics and automation ventures.
The announcement came on Friday, after which Kalanick appeared for an hour-long interview on the TBPN podcast, where he explained his plans to deploy “gainfully employed robots” across food service, mining, and transport sectors.
After leaving Uber in 2017, Kalanick started CloudKitchens, initially known as City Storage Systems, a food delivery infrastructure business. The core idea, he explained, was delivering prepared meals so efficiently that costs approach those of grocery shopping. “The whole idea was, can you get a meal that’s prepared and delivered to you so efficiently that it starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store,” Kalanick said. “Because if you do, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car. So I’ve been doing that since 2018.”
Now, Atoms absorbs CloudKitchens and takes the idea toward industrial-scale robotics, focussing on specialised machines rather than general-purpose humanoids. “We’ve been quiet for eight years with thousands of employees who couldn’t even list us on LinkedIn,” Kalanick said, emphasising a push for efficiency in physical labour markets.
After the public intensity of Uber—facing “a hundred headlines every day” and shaping decisions around media reaction—Kalanick said he chose to go quiet. “That’s a tough way to run a business,” he said. “I got to wake up every day and just get to work and build.”
Post-Uber ouster, Kalanick raised hundreds of millions for CloudKitchens, including $400 million from Saudi Arabia’s PIF. Atoms marks his return to high-profile hardware and AI infrastructure amid a robotics boom, betting specialised automation can drive abundance for business owners and society.
The company operates in three divisions: Atoms Food, which uses robotics, real estate, and autonomous delivery to match grocery store economics for prepared meals, Atoms Mining for productivity gains, and Atoms Transport, centred on a “wheelbase for robots” as core logistics technology.
The Information had reported on Friday that Kalanick was building a new self-driving venture with “major backing” from Uber.
He had resigned as CEO of Uber in 2017 due to pressure from investors, capping a tumultuous period for the ride-services company. In 2019, he left the company board.
Kalanick wrote on the startup's website that he was "heartbroken" after he had left Uber and now he was back to his "calling" of building atoms-based computers.
The announcement came on Friday, after which Kalanick appeared for an hour-long interview on the TBPN podcast, where he explained his plans to deploy “gainfully employed robots” across food service, mining, and transport sectors.
After leaving Uber in 2017, Kalanick started CloudKitchens, initially known as City Storage Systems, a food delivery infrastructure business. The core idea, he explained, was delivering prepared meals so efficiently that costs approach those of grocery shopping. “The whole idea was, can you get a meal that’s prepared and delivered to you so efficiently that it starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store,” Kalanick said. “Because if you do, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car. So I’ve been doing that since 2018.”
Now, Atoms absorbs CloudKitchens and takes the idea toward industrial-scale robotics, focussing on specialised machines rather than general-purpose humanoids. “We’ve been quiet for eight years with thousands of employees who couldn’t even list us on LinkedIn,” Kalanick said, emphasising a push for efficiency in physical labour markets.
After the public intensity of Uber—facing “a hundred headlines every day” and shaping decisions around media reaction—Kalanick said he chose to go quiet. “That’s a tough way to run a business,” he said. “I got to wake up every day and just get to work and build.”
Post-Uber ouster, Kalanick raised hundreds of millions for CloudKitchens, including $400 million from Saudi Arabia’s PIF. Atoms marks his return to high-profile hardware and AI infrastructure amid a robotics boom, betting specialised automation can drive abundance for business owners and society.
The company operates in three divisions: Atoms Food, which uses robotics, real estate, and autonomous delivery to match grocery store economics for prepared meals, Atoms Mining for productivity gains, and Atoms Transport, centred on a “wheelbase for robots” as core logistics technology.
The Information had reported on Friday that Kalanick was building a new self-driving venture with “major backing” from Uber.
He had resigned as CEO of Uber in 2017 due to pressure from investors, capping a tumultuous period for the ride-services company. In 2019, he left the company board.
Kalanick wrote on the startup's website that he was "heartbroken" after he had left Uber and now he was back to his "calling" of building atoms-based computers.
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