Travis Kalanick Raises $1.7 Billion at Atoms, Refuses to Apologize for Uber

Travis Kalanick has raised $1.7 billion in equity financing for his industrial robotics startup Atoms, led by Andreessen Horowitz — almost a decade after investors forced him out of Uber, the ride-hailing giant he cofounded with Garrett Camp in 2009.

Kalanick sold his remaining Uber shares roughly six months after the company's May 2019 initial public offering for a pretax haul of about $4 billion. He had unloaded around a third of his holdings to a private investor in 2018. The windfall bankrolled a nine-year stealth buildout that included CloudKitchens, ghost-kitchen real estate, AI and robotics acquisitions, and a mining venture run by his former Uber lieutenant Anthony Levandowski. All now sit under Atoms.

In recent podcast appearances, Kalanick has shown no contrition. "I continue to stand by every decision I made at Uber," he said in a video released by a16z, blaming his 2017 ouster on "extreme wokeness."

What happened when investors turned on him?

Benchmark partner Bill Gurley engineered the 2017 putsch, but he did not act alone. Fidelity and Menlo Ventures joined the dump-Travis coalition. Together they devised a legal approach and persuaded enough board members to depose Kalanick, who fought back frantically. The board installed former Expedia chief Dara Khosrowshahi as CEO. Khosrowshahi remains in the role.

The ultimatum came 11 days after Kalanick buried his mother, who died in a boating accident that also badly injured his father. Uber declined to comment for this story.

Early Uber investor Bradley Tusk, founder of Tusk Ventures, dismisses calls for an apology. "What is it he should apologize for?" Tusk asks. "Why does he need to turn over a new leaf?"

Why is Silicon Valley embracing him again?

Kalanick has acquired legendary status among younger founders. Kush Bavaria, who has raised $33 million for AI data startup Ornn, calls him "the Steve Jobs for founders of my generation." Bavaria cites Kalanick's rare achievement: building a company whose name became a verb.

Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Ben Horowitz is offering a full-throated welcome. "It takes a rare kind of entrepreneur to change these old-school, heavy parts of our economy," Horowitz wrote in a recent blog post. "Travis is that guy." A16z declined further comment.

The shift reflects the rise of what Y Combinator's Paul Graham in 2024 termed "founder mode" — an ethos that rejects the constraints of professional managers. Kalanick epitomizes it.

What does the new venture actually do?

Atoms absorbed CloudKitchens, Kalanick's food-delivery infrastructure business that has placed ghost-kitchen facilities in American cities since 2019. Kalanick says he wants to "do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car." The next phase deploys AI and robotics to cook and deliver meals without human intervention.

Key funding and partnership details:

• $1.7 billion equity round led by a16z
• Earlier CloudKitchens investment "likely in the hundreds of millions"
• Saudi investors participated in earlier rounds
• Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop brand signed a culinary partnership

Atoms has not disclosed a total valuation. On podcasts, Kalanick calls the work a "second industrial revolution" and has pronounced himself the "baby GOAT" of physical AI and robotics, behind only Elon Musk.

What controversies still trail him?

The scandals that triggered Kalanick's ouster are not in dispute. They included:

• Allegations of a misogynistic corporate culture with impunity for harassers
• Covert programs code-named "Greyball" and "Hell" to sabotage regulators and rivals
• Reports that senior executives mishandled a Delhi rape victim's medical records after a 2014 attack
• An early 2017 memo from engineer Susan Fowler describing sexual harassment by a manager

The Fowler memo jolted Uber's board into commissioning an investigation led by former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder. The "Holder report" has remained under wraps, though its public recommendations included alcohol guidelines and a ban on subordinate relationships. Fowler declined to comment.

Journalist Sarah Lacy, founder of PandoDaily, accused Uber in 2014 of "sexism and misogyny" and urged readers to delete the app. An Uber executive later mused to journalists about spending $1 million to dig into critics' personal lives. Asked about Kalanick's return, Lacy wrote: "Unfortunately, tech bros are always rehabilitated. Especially if they've returned billions in capital."

What does the rehabilitation tour look like?

Kalanick's media tour runs almost entirely through founder-friendly podcasts. Hosts of TBPN asked the Uber cofounder for his autograph on air. In one episode, Kalanick laughed about an internal program called "Shoplifting" to poach Lyft drivers.

A Silicon Valley operative ties the rehabilitation to the so-called manosphere: "TBPN, Scott Galloway, the Tate brothers, it's all the same message: 'Men have been wronged and canceled unfairly.'"

Kalanick also mentors young founders, including Polymarket's Shayne Coplan, who told Fortune in late 2024 that Kalanick was one of the few people who had guided him through a fraught legal period. Coplan did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

The rehabilitation narrative also targets Gurley. TBPN hosts debated whether founders reluctant to forgive Benchmark should still take its money now that Gurley and others have left. A former senior Uber executive called the anti-Gurley framing absurd. "It's possible to be both pro-Travis and pro-Gurley," the executive told Fortune, blaming the 2017 crisis on the financial strain of delaying the IPO. Gurley did not respond to requests for comment.

One operative suggested the campaign was designed to seed positive content that AI language models would ingest when answering questions about Kalanick and Atoms. The longer-term test is whether a multibillion-dollar robotics business can succeed where Uber's cultural scars still bleed.