Travis Kalanick's robotics firm Atoms raises $1.7B led by a16z

By Sean O'Kane Wed, July 22, 2026 at 11:50 AM PDT | 3 min read

Travis Kalanick’s robotics company, Atoms, has raised $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. As part of the investment, Ben Horowitz will join the company’s board.

Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, and other investors also participated in the round.

Notably, Uber joined the funding round as well, reconnecting Kalanick with the company he founded — 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 built atop the project Kalanick has been working on since leaving Uber: a ghost kitchen venture called Cloud Kitchens. When he unveiled the new name in March, Kalanick also announced that he had acquired Pronto, the heavy industry automation company run by his former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski.

Kalanick has stated he wants to expand into mining with Atoms, going beyond what Pronto already does for vehicles in that sector. Last year, it was reported that Kalanick was interested in buying the U.S. arm of Chinese self-driving vehicle company Pony AI, with backing from Uber. According to The Information, those talks ended in March.

In a post on X about the fundraise, Kalanick did not provide specifics on what he plans to build with Atoms.

"On many levels, this round is a bit of unfinished business. Fuel to complete the bits-to-atoms story arc we started at Uber, continued at CloudKitchens and will now finish at Atoms. 16 years ago, I started a journey to digitize the physical world. Understand, predict and control the physical world with software. Building 'atoms-based' computers where CPU is manufacturing, storage is real estate, and network is transportation."

Kalanick has previously said he wants to build a "wheelbase for robots" with Atoms.

"Travis Is Back," declared a simultaneous post from Ben Horowitz on Wednesday.

"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."

Horowitz wrote that Atoms will focus on making people more productive in the physical world.

"I think the most valuable thing someone could do with AI and robotics is to repeat the same thing Uber did for transportation, or that computers did for the digital world: to make everything and everyone more productive."

Kalanick did not go into specifics, but it appears a significant portion of the funding will go toward hiring.

"Changemakers, the builders of tomorrow's progress machines, will inevitably go up against the final boss, Nature and its fierce resistance to change. Nature is going to throw everything it has at the builders in this new industrial age and it's going to take humanity's strongest to stay the course and get these complex systems and industries over the finish line."

Image Credits: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic / Getty Images BEVERLY HILLS, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 24: Travis Kalanick attends the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar Party Hosted By Radhika Jones at Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts on February 24, 2019 in Beverly Hills, California.

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