On Friday, March 13, Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick launched a new startup, Atoms, which focuses on specialized industrial robotics to automate tasks in mining, transport, and food. The company seems to be an expanded and rebranded iteration of Kalanick’s earlier venture, City Storage Systems, the parent company of ghost-kitchen operator CloudKitchens.
The startup will be organized into three divisions: Atoms Food, which provides infrastructure for the food industry; Atoms Mining, focused on enhancing mine productivity; and Atoms Transport, described by Kalanick as a “wheelbase for robots” in the 1,700-word mission statement on Atoms’ website. With Atoms, Kalanick is placing his bet on task-specific machines as the key to boosting industrial productivity. During a Friday appearance on the TBPN podcast, the tech billionaire also revealed that Atoms has been operating in stealth mode for eight years with “thousands of employees.
The announcement comes as interest grows in physical AI and humanoid robots, which face challenges in navigating unpredictable environments and complex reasoning. Specialized robots, however, offer a clearer path to profitability in sectors like transport and waste management. Post-Uber, Kalanick described his focus as building atoms-based computers to automate real-world tasks.
Reflecting on his journey, he said, “I bled, but I did not perish. I got back up and fought my way back into the arena, back to my calling. Back to building.” He added, “Today we expand our physical world computation portfolio to the Mining and Transport industries and rename the company Atoms. At Atoms we make gainfully employed robots, specialised robots with productive jobs that bring abundance to their owners and society at large.”
Travis Kalanick co-founded Uber in 2009 and resigned as CEO in 2017 amid investor pressure, leaving the board in 2019. He then became CEO of City Storage Systems, growing it to a reported $15 billion valuation by 2022. The company also owns CloudKitchens, a network of commercial kitchens for delivery, pickup, and food production.
