Travis Kalanick, chief executive officer of City Storage Systems, during the Future Investment Initiative Institute Priority conference in Miami, Florida, Feb. 21, 2025.
Zak Bennett | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Uber founder and ex-CEO Travis Kalanick has renamed his latest venture as Atoms and said on Friday that he’s expanding beyond food and into mining and transportation.
After being forced to resign from Uber in 2017, Kalanick joined joined City Storage Systems as CEO the following year. City Storage is the parent of ghost-kitchen operator CloudKitchens, which Kalanick quickly grew to a reported $15 billion valuation by 2022.
Kalanick, who founded Uber in 2009, said on the “TBPN” podcast on Friday that Atoms has been operating in stealth for eight years with “thousands of employees.” And on the new Atoms website, Kalanick wrote close to 1,700 words laying out his mission.
“Today we expand our physical world computation portfolio to the Mining and Transport industries and rename the company Atoms,” Kalanick wrote. Regarding the technology, he added, “At Atoms we make gainfully employed robots — specialized robots with productive jobs that bring abundance to their owners and society at large.”
The Information reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter, that Kalanick was preparing to unveil a new robotics and self-driving car company with backing from Uber.
“Up until today, I was running a company called City Storage Systems, which was basically about the future of food,” Kalanick said on “TBPN.” He said the concept was about making prepared food delivery more efficient than grocery shopping.
On the Atoms website, Kalanick said the company is focused on three subcategories: Atoms Food, which is “infrastructure for better food,” Atoms Mining, providing “more productive mines,” Atoms Transport, a “Wheelbase for robots.”
The CloudKitchens website is still live. The company operates commercial kitchens that can be used by eateries, large and small, to help with delivery, pickup and food production.
On the Atoms website, Kalanick says he entered the venture after leaving Uber “heartbroken.”
“I bled, but I did not perish,” Kalanick wrote. “I got back up and fought my way back into the arena, back to my calling. Back to building.”
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