Travis Kalanick emerges from 8-year stealth mode with Atoms, a robotics company betting against humanoids

Travis Kalanick Unveils Atoms After Eight Years in Stealth

Travis Kalanick, the co-founder and former CEO of Uber, has emerged from nearly a decade of secrecy to reveal Atoms, a specialized industrial robotics company that has been quietly operating since 2017 3

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. For eight years, thousands of employees worked for a company they weren't allowed to publicly acknowledge as their employer, until Kalanick decided to lift the veil on March 13, 2026 3

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Atoms represents the rebranding and expansion of City Storage Systems, the holding company Kalanick founded in 2016 after his tumultuous departure from Uber 4

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. City Storage Systems has raised more than $1 billion in equity and debt financing, building a foundation that now supports Kalanick's broader robotics ambitions 4

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Betting on Specialized Robots Over Humanoids

Kalanick's vision for Atoms centers on what he calls "gainfully employed robots"—task-specific machines designed for high-cycle industrial environments rather than general-purpose humanoid systems 2

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. "Gainfully employed robots are the machines best suited for the job at hand, that can make a living doing it," Kalanick said in a statement .

In a live interview with TBPN, Kalanick explained that his company will apply specialized robots to industrial-scale operations. "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," he said 1

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. This approach deliberately counters the current industry focus on bipedal machines from companies like Boston Dynamics, Figure, and 1X 3

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Building a Wheelbase for Robots Across Three Industries

Atoms will operate through three distinct divisions targeting food, mining, and transportation sectors 1

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. The core product thesis revolves around a wheelbase for robots—a standardized mobility platform consisting of a common chassis equipped with power, compute, and sensors that can be outfitted for specific industrial tasks 3

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. The analogy Kalanick draws is to the automotive industry, where a single platform underpins multiple vehicle variants 3

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Atoms Food incorporates CloudKitchens, the ghost kitchen company that leases commercial cooking spaces to restaurant operators for food delivery 4

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. The division also includes Lab37, which has developed a 19-foot-long kitchen robot called the Bowl Builder that can automate up to 40% of the manual work involved in preparing orders 4

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. Additionally, Atoms absorbed Otter, a suite of applications that restaurant operators use to process online orders and run ads across delivery apps 4

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Pronto AI Inc. Acquisition to Power Mining and Transport Ambitions

To extend its platform into mining and autonomous vehicles, Atoms is on the verge of acquiring Pronto AI Inc., the autonomous vehicle startup founded by Anthony Levandowski 3

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. Kalanick confirmed he is already Pronto's largest investor and is close to acquiring its remaining shares 4

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Pronto's flagship product is an autonomous driving system built for haul trucks—large, multimillion-dollar vehicles used in mining and construction for material transport tasks 4

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. The system provides Level 4 autonomy, enabling vehicles to operate without human guidance in limited areas using GPS modules, cameras, and radar sensors housed in ruggedized cases designed to withstand harsh conditions 4

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The connection to Levandowski is notable given their shared history at Uber. Kalanick had created a self-driving division at Uber in 2015, luring Levandowski away from Google to play a major role in that project 1

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. That partnership ended in legal turmoil when Uber was sued by Google for stealing self-driving car secrets, and Levandowski was criminally charged and sentenced to 18 months in prison before receiving a pardon from President Trump 1

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Physical Artificial Intelligence as Kalanick's Calling

On Atoms' website, Kalanick wrote that he was "heartbroken" after leaving Uber and is now back to his "calling" of building atoms-based computers, which are specialized systems using physical artificial intelligence to automate tasks in the real world 5

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. This framing positions Atoms as more than just another robotics venture—it's Kalanick's attempt to digitize the physical world at industrial scale 3

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The timing matters. Interest has been rising in specialized robots as they could offer a clear path to profitability, given the stress on automation across industries such as transport and waste management 2

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. Meanwhile, general-purpose humanoid robotics faces challenges including how to teach machines to navigate unpredictable environments and develop sophisticated reasoning abilities 2

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The Information reported that Atoms is set to receive "major backing" from Uber, though the company didn't immediately respond to requests for comment 1

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. Earlier reports suggested Kalanick has told people he "wants to be more aggressive in rolling out self-driving technology than Waymo" 1

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. Last year, Kalanick was said to be interested in buying the U.S. arm of Chinese self-driving vehicle company Pony AI with backing from Uber, though those talks ended 1

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Whether eight years of stealth development have produced technology capable of competing with robotics programs from Amazon, Tesla, and well-funded startups remains to be seen 3

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. What's clear is that Kalanick is making a substantial bet that task-specific machines are the key to improving industrial productivity across the food industry, mining, and transportation—and that the company best positioned to build that platform started quietly in 2017, in a business that looked like kitchens 3

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