Travis Kalanick Returns With Atoms, a Robotics Venture Merging Food, Mining, and Transport

Travis Kalanick Launches Atoms, a Robotics Company With Big Industrial Ambitions

Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick is making a high-profile return to the technology arena with the launch of a new robotics-focused enterprise called Atoms. According to the company's official website, Atoms intends to operate across three distinct sectors: food, mining, and transportation — signaling an ambitious push into industrial automation.

CloudKitchens Absorbed Into the Atoms Ecosystem

Kalanick's ghost kitchen venture, CloudKitchens, will be folded directly into Atoms as part of the consolidation. CloudKitchens, which disrupted the restaurant industry by offering shared commercial kitchen spaces for delivery-only food brands, now becomes a foundational piece of a much larger robotics vision.

While Kalanick has been more forthcoming about the food and mining verticals, precise details on how Atoms plans to break into transportation remain limited for now.

Specialized Robots, Not Humanoids

Speaking in a live interview with TBPN, Kalanick outlined a focused philosophy behind Atoms' robotics development. The company intends to engineer a "wheelbase for robots" — a standardized platform that can be adapted for purpose-built, specialized machines rather than general-purpose humanoid robots.

"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," Kalanick explained.

This industrial-first mindset, he suggested, represents the company's core identity. "The industrial thing is sort of like, probably, our main jam," he added.

Pronto Acquisition Signals Mining Push

To anchor its mining ambitions, Kalanick revealed he is on the verge of acquiring Pronto, an autonomous vehicle startup built specifically for industrial and mining environments. Pronto was founded by Anthony Levandowski, a former Uber colleague with deep roots in the self-driving vehicle space.

Kalanick disclosed that he is already Pronto's largest individual investor, underscoring a long-standing belief in the company's direction. The acquisition, if completed, would give Atoms immediate access to proven autonomous technology tailored for rugged, off-road industrial conditions.

The Information was first to report that Kalanick had been in discussions to acquire Pronto.

Uber's Shadow Looms Large

The same report from The Information also noted that Kalanick's new venture may carry significant financial backing from Uber, his former company. Sources indicated that Kalanick has expressed a desire to deploy self-driving technology more aggressively than even Waymo, Alphabet's well-funded autonomous vehicle division. Uber has not publicly commented on the matter, and Atoms' website contains no reference to any Uber involvement.

Separately, earlier negotiations that would have seen Kalanick acquire the U.S. operations of Chinese autonomous driving company Pony AI — reportedly also with Uber support — have since fallen through, according to The Information.

A Complicated History With Self-Driving Technology

Kalanick's renewed interest in autonomous vehicles comes with a loaded backstory. Back in 2015, while still leading Uber, he established an internal self-driving division and recruited Levandowski away from Google to spearhead it. That move triggered a high-profile legal battle when Google alleged that Levandowski had stolen proprietary technology related to its self-driving project — the program that would eventually evolve into Waymo.

Uber and Google ultimately reached a settlement, but Levandowski faced criminal prosecution and was sentenced to 18 months in prison. He later received a last-minute pardon from President Trump near the end of his first term in office.

Kalanick stepped down from Uber in 2017 following a wave of internal crises, including widespread allegations of sexual harassment and workplace discrimination that prompted an external investigation resulting in more than 20 employee terminations.

After his departure, Uber continued developing its autonomous technology — until one of its test vehicles fatally struck a pedestrian in 2018. His successor, Dara Khosrowshahi, eventually shut down the division and offloaded it to autonomous trucking firm Aurora in 2020.

In a candid interview earlier in March 2025, Kalanick openly admitted his regret over Uber's decision to abandon its self-driving program — a sentiment that now appears to be driving his latest entrepreneurial chapter.

What Comes Next for Atoms

With a robotics platform in development, a ghost kitchen business in tow, a potential acquisition on the horizon, and rumored backing from one of the world's largest ride-hailing companies, Atoms is positioning itself as a serious player in the next wave of industrial automation. Whether Kalanick can translate that ambition into lasting impact remains to be seen — but his return to the frontier of autonomous technology is anything but quiet.