\n<\/p>\n
Travis Kalanick\u2019s robotics company, Atoms, has raised $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Ben Horowitz will join the company\u2019s board following the investment.<\/p>\n
Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, and others participated in the round. <\/p>\n
Perhaps most notably, Uber also joined the funding round, re-connecting Kalanick with the company he founded \u2014 and the same company that pushed him out as CEO in 2017 following complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination, and a toxic workplace.<\/p>\n
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. <\/p>\n
In a post<\/a> on X about the fundraise, Kalanick didn\u2019t go into specifics about what he wants to build with Atoms.<\/p>\n \u201cOn 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,\u201d Kalanick wrote. \u201c16 years ago, I started a journey to digitize the physical world. Understand, predict and control the physical world with software. Building \u2018atoms-based\u2019 computers where CPU is manufacturing, storage is real estate, and network is transportation.\u201d<\/p>\n Kalanick has said he wants to build a \u201cwheelbase for robots\u201d with Atoms. <\/p>\n \u201cTravis is Back,\u201d declared a simultaneous post from Ben Horowitz on Wednesday. \u201cIt 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,\u201d said Horowitz.<\/p>\n This story is developing\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n