Travis Kalanick’s robotics company raises $1.7B, led by a16z
Travis Kalanick’s robotics startup, Atoms, has secured $1.7 billion in funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company aims to digitize the physical world by building a 'wheelbase for robots' and integrating manufacturing and logistics software.
Why it matters
This marks a significant return for the former Uber CEO into the tech spotlight, signaling a major capital injection into the industrial robotics and automation sector.
Travis Kalanick’s robotics company, Atoms, has raised $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Ben Horowitz will join the company’s board following the investment.
Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, and others participated in the round.
Perhaps most notably, Uber also joined the funding round, re-connecting Kalanick with the company he founded — and the same company that pushed him out as CEO in 2017 following complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination, and a toxic workplace.
Atoms is essentially a rebranded holding company created atop the project Kalanick has been working on since he resigned from Uber, a ghost kitchen play called Cloud Kitchens. When he revealed the new name in March, Kalanick announced he had acquired Pronto, the heavy industry automation company run by his former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski.
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