Travis Kalanick's robotics company Atoms has raised $1.7 billion in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Ben Horowitz joining the board. Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, and Uber also participated — the latter marking a striking reunion between Kalanick and the ride-hail company that pushed him out as CEO in 2017 following complaints of harassment, discrimination, and a toxic workplace.
Atoms is a rebranded holding company built on top of Cloud Kitchens, the ghost-kitchen operation Kalanick has been running since leaving Uber. When he unveiled the Atoms name in March 2026, he also announced the acquisition of Pronto, a heavy-industry automation company led by his former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski. Kalanick has said he intends to push beyond Pronto's current work automating vehicles, with mining as one target industry.
The pitch, in Kalanick's own framing, is to build what he calls a wheelbase for robots — a shared physical and software substrate that other robotics companies can build on top of. In a post on X announcing the round, he described Atoms as the culmination of a 16-year arc that runs through Uber and Cloud Kitchens.
Key facts
- 01Atoms raised $1.7B in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Ben Horowitz joining the board.
- 02Uber joined the round, reconnecting Travis Kalanick with the company that pushed him out as CEO in 2017.
- 03Bain Capital and Fifth Wall also participated in the financing.
- 04Atoms is built atop Cloud Kitchens and now includes Pronto, the heavy-industry automation firm run by Anthony Levandowski, acquired in March 2026.
- 05Kalanick says he wants to build a 'wheelbase for robots' and expand into mining automation.
The round positions Atoms as one of the better-capitalized robotics platforms in a market that has grown crowded fast. Physical Intelligence, which Anthropic reportedly held acquisition talks with, and OpenAI's own robotics push have both drawn attention this year. Kalanick's $1.7B war chest arrives without a shipping product to point to, which makes the size of the round a bet on the operator more than the technology.
Uber's participation is the most-loaded detail. Kalanick was forced out of Uber in 2017 after a series of workplace and cultural scandals; the company he founded is now writing checks into his next venture. Neither Uber nor Kalanick disclosed the size of Uber's contribution to the round.
The path to Atoms has included at least one abandoned detour. Last year, Kalanick was reported to be interested in buying the U.S. operations of Chinese self-driving company Pony AI, with Uber backing the deal. Those talks ended in March, freeing Kalanick to consolidate around Pronto and the broader Atoms thesis instead.
“It takes a rare kind of entrepreneur to change these old-school, heavy parts of our economy. They need a gritty work ethic, drive, and range that spans across domains, from software architecture to mechanical engineering. Travis is that guy”— Ben Horowitz, Co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz
Ben Horowitz posted a companion note on Wednesday titled "Travis is Back," arguing that Atoms will center on AI and robotics that make people more productive in the physical world. Horowitz framed the opportunity as doing for physical industry what Uber did for transportation and what computers did for information work.
Kalanick did not detail headcount targets or a product roadmap, but his post suggests a meaningful share of the $1.7B will fund hiring across software architecture and mechanical engineering — the two disciplines Horowitz singled out. Pronto's existing team gives Atoms a running start on the hardware and autonomy side, particularly in mining and other heavy-vehicle applications.
The open questions are the usual ones for well-funded robotics platforms. Timelines to revenue in heavy industry are long, unit economics on physical-world autonomy are unforgiving, and Atoms has not yet named a lead customer, a deployment site, or a specific mining partner. Kalanick's own post acknowledged the difficulty, describing Nature as the "final boss" that builders in the new industrial age will have to beat.
For Andreessen Horowitz, the check fits a pattern of concentrated bets on founder-led platform plays in physical AI. For Uber, participating in the round is a quieter kind of signal — that whatever the 2017 exit was about, the company now sees strategic value in being early to whatever Atoms ends up being. If Kalanick can turn Pronto's automation stack into a genuine horizontal layer for industrial robots, the $1.7B will look like a bargain; if Atoms ends up as another well-funded robotics company chasing pilots, it will be one of the more expensive lessons in the sector this cycle.
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