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    Travis Kalanick Raises $1.7 Billion for Atoms

    Former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick's new company Atoms raised funding from Andreessen Horowitz.

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    11 Sources, 49d ago, first seen 49d ago

    TLDR

    Posts from investors and a16z describe Travis Kalanick returning with Atoms, an industrial AI company. One tweet states he raised $1.7 billion from Andreessen Horowitz. Kalanick comments on past silence, media shifts, and his drive, saying he has worked steadily without public updates. a16z posts quote him on building culture around merit and pushing forward, plus his experience from earlier ventures. The account notes the check as Ben Horowitz's largest to date.

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    11 Sources, first seen 49d ago

    Combined views

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    11 Sources, first seen 49d ago

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    139 comments
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    323 reposts
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    11 Sources

    @TradingVCsTravis Kalanick is back. The former Uber CEO just raised $1.7 billion from Andreessen Horowitz for his new company, Atoms. But the big question is: Would you bet on @travisk again? "I would say Travis is definitely one of the best entrepreneurs of our generation, right up there with Bezos and Elon and others. So I would definitely bet money on Travis." -@davemcclure Dave and @AmanVerjee dive into the former Uber CEO's big comeback on Trading Places Podcast EP43.
    @davemcclureRT @TradingVCs: Travis Kalanick is back. The former Uber CEO just raised $1.7 billion from Andreessen Horowitz for his new company, Atoms.…
    @a16zTravis Kalanick: "A lot of folks think I'm back. I've been working my ass off the whole time. I just haven't been talking about it." Eight years, thousands of employees, multiple industries, none of it on LinkedIn, and now the biggest check Ben Horowitz has ever written. @travisk joins @bhorowitz and @eriktorenberg for a fireside chat to discuss Atoms: an industrial AI company that sees manufacturing, real estate, and logistics as the CPU, storage, and network of the physical world: 00:00 Intro 01:30 The Uber video from 10 years ago 04:26 Bits, atoms, and the three computing primitives 07:37 Can a delivered meal cost less than the grocery store? 10:16 Standing next to a TCP packet 11:59 Ride-sharing was the gold medal. Transport is full of silver 13:59 Resistance to change is the final boss 22:22 Why he didn't buy Lyft 24:09 Best idea wins 28:13 Blood, sweat, and ramen 32:32 When it gets easy, push harder 36:18 Showing up to the fundraise like a guy selling watches 45:46 Dirty fuel vs. falling in love again 48:31 Be uniconic
    @eriktorenbergTravis on how he feels about Uber today: "When you fall in love again, you don't think about the ex very much."
    @VirtualElenaback in 2017 i was interning as an equities analyst at a fund in nyc, which had a 9am morning call every weekday. the purpose of this call was to discuss quarterly earnings or current events or whether we should be buying nvidia (at the time, on a tear because of the '17 crypto boom), but one morning in june the call opened with a bunch of people freaking out because some guy named "travis" had resigned. after a couple of rounds of "travis is gone" "did they fire him" "bloomberg says he resigned," i was especially confused because the firm had a portfolio manager named travis, and i looked over at his desk and he was still sitting there, not being escorted out by security or anything. who was travis? it was only after things had calmed down that i realized the people on this call were talking about *travis kalanick* of uber, a figure who loomed so large in the minds of wall street investors that even *two years before* uber ipo-ed, the news of his departure was treated like a six sigma event. everyone wanted to know: if travis was gone, what would happen to his company? even in his uber days, travis was the bits and atoms guy (watch the video clipped in the first ~2 minutes of the below podcast for proof of that). and in order to be a bits and atoms guy - as in, the kind of guy who's so discontent with the slow, staid, schlerotic state of things that he has to painstakingly reorchestrate the physical world with computers, perhaps pissing off some powerful interests along the way - some people might call you difficult. some people will not understand your vision. some people will try to get you fired. but if you're a bits and atoms guy, you never stop being one. you might retreat into near-obscurity, or spend years wandering in the wilderness, biding your time in exile. but you will not stop building. and one day you will return triumphant like a modern-day charles de gaulle, even better than ever, and ready to prove wrong everyone who didn't understand the first time around. being in a room with travis leaves you pretty pumped up. you can see why he's such a rallying leader, and why (by my count) at least six top uber execs have chosen to follow him to his new company, atoms. it isn't simply that the job isn't finished (although that's a big part of it, as travis attests). it's also because it's clear that there are very few leaders like travis out there: people who have such a holistic worldview that they can get people who would otherwise be founders themselves to join the ride and help build an extremely specific vision for the future. here are some things that stood out to me from this event: -travis is a branding/comms mastermind. he deploys memorable phrases like “food computer,” “wheelbase for robots,” “atoms as bits” and describes his vision for cheap meal delivery as "autonomous burritos." you can see why people get excited for his vision for the future. there's extraordinary complexity in what atoms is trying to do, but travis makes each step along the way feel manageable because he can distill these ideas into extremely concrete images. -atoms is building full-stack autonomation for three different divisions: food, mining, and transportation. food supplies the real estate, software, robotics, and logistics laboratory; mining supplies a commercially deployed autonomy business; and transport is intended to become the reusable movement platform connecting multiple physical industries. travis argues humanoids make sense for diverse, low-volume work in spaces designed for people. but at industrial scale (which atoms is doing), purpose-built machines should win on throughput, space, cost, and reliability. -the best way to get over your last company may be the same as the best way to get over your ex: fall in love again. travis says anger and fear of failure can carry a founder through years of pain, but they also produce long nights where very little gets done and sharp elbows felt by everyone around you. atoms is what happened when he learned to build toward a future rather than against an enemy. -doing hard things is a reminder you can do more hard things. in the q&a ben remembers travis describing attacks by chinese ride-sharing companies as proof that, if he could survive china, the rest of the world would be manageable. travis still deliberately creates problems when things become easy. but the rate of problem creation cannot exceed the organization’s rate of problem-solving. such a fun talk and q+a with @travisk @bhorowitz @eriktorenberg ! check it out.
    @garrytanRT @VirtualElena: back in 2017 i was interning as an equities analyst at a fund in nyc, which had a 9am morning call every weekday. the pur…
    @MatthewBerman@eriktorenberg Banger

    11 Sources

    @TradingVCsTravis Kalanick is back. The former Uber CEO just raised $1.7 billion from Andreessen Horowitz for his new company, Atoms. But the big question is: Would you bet on @travisk again? "I would say Travis is definitely one of the best entrepreneurs of our generation, right up there with Bezos and Elon and others. So I would definitely bet money on Travis." -@davemcclure Dave and @AmanVerjee dive into the former Uber CEO's big comeback on Trading Places Podcast EP43.
    @davemcclureRT @TradingVCs: Travis Kalanick is back. The former Uber CEO just raised $1.7 billion from Andreessen Horowitz for his new company, Atoms.…
    @a16zTravis Kalanick: "A lot of folks think I'm back. I've been working my ass off the whole time. I just haven't been talking about it." Eight years, thousands of employees, multiple industries, none of it on LinkedIn, and now the biggest check Ben Horowitz has ever written. @travisk joins @bhorowitz and @eriktorenberg for a fireside chat to discuss Atoms: an industrial AI company that sees manufacturing, real estate, and logistics as the CPU, storage, and network of the physical world: 00:00 Intro 01:30 The Uber video from 10 years ago 04:26 Bits, atoms, and the three computing primitives 07:37 Can a delivered meal cost less than the grocery store? 10:16 Standing next to a TCP packet 11:59 Ride-sharing was the gold medal. Transport is full of silver 13:59 Resistance to change is the final boss 22:22 Why he didn't buy Lyft 24:09 Best idea wins 28:13 Blood, sweat, and ramen 32:32 When it gets easy, push harder 36:18 Showing up to the fundraise like a guy selling watches 45:46 Dirty fuel vs. falling in love again 48:31 Be uniconic
    @eriktorenbergTravis on how he feels about Uber today: "When you fall in love again, you don't think about the ex very much."
    @VirtualElenaback in 2017 i was interning as an equities analyst at a fund in nyc, which had a 9am morning call every weekday. the purpose of this call was to discuss quarterly earnings or current events or whether we should be buying nvidia (at the time, on a tear because of the '17 crypto boom), but one morning in june the call opened with a bunch of people freaking out because some guy named "travis" had resigned. after a couple of rounds of "travis is gone" "did they fire him" "bloomberg says he resigned," i was especially confused because the firm had a portfolio manager named travis, and i looked over at his desk and he was still sitting there, not being escorted out by security or anything. who was travis? it was only after things had calmed down that i realized the people on this call were talking about *travis kalanick* of uber, a figure who loomed so large in the minds of wall street investors that even *two years before* uber ipo-ed, the news of his departure was treated like a six sigma event. everyone wanted to know: if travis was gone, what would happen to his company? even in his uber days, travis was the bits and atoms guy (watch the video clipped in the first ~2 minutes of the below podcast for proof of that). and in order to be a bits and atoms guy - as in, the kind of guy who's so discontent with the slow, staid, schlerotic state of things that he has to painstakingly reorchestrate the physical world with computers, perhaps pissing off some powerful interests along the way - some people might call you difficult. some people will not understand your vision. some people will try to get you fired. but if you're a bits and atoms guy, you never stop being one. you might retreat into near-obscurity, or spend years wandering in the wilderness, biding your time in exile. but you will not stop building. and one day you will return triumphant like a modern-day charles de gaulle, even better than ever, and ready to prove wrong everyone who didn't understand the first time around. being in a room with travis leaves you pretty pumped up. you can see why he's such a rallying leader, and why (by my count) at least six top uber execs have chosen to follow him to his new company, atoms. it isn't simply that the job isn't finished (although that's a big part of it, as travis attests). it's also because it's clear that there are very few leaders like travis out there: people who have such a holistic worldview that they can get people who would otherwise be founders themselves to join the ride and help build an extremely specific vision for the future. here are some things that stood out to me from this event: -travis is a branding/comms mastermind. he deploys memorable phrases like “food computer,” “wheelbase for robots,” “atoms as bits” and describes his vision for cheap meal delivery as "autonomous burritos." you can see why people get excited for his vision for the future. there's extraordinary complexity in what atoms is trying to do, but travis makes each step along the way feel manageable because he can distill these ideas into extremely concrete images. -atoms is building full-stack autonomation for three different divisions: food, mining, and transportation. food supplies the real estate, software, robotics, and logistics laboratory; mining supplies a commercially deployed autonomy business; and transport is intended to become the reusable movement platform connecting multiple physical industries. travis argues humanoids make sense for diverse, low-volume work in spaces designed for people. but at industrial scale (which atoms is doing), purpose-built machines should win on throughput, space, cost, and reliability. -the best way to get over your last company may be the same as the best way to get over your ex: fall in love again. travis says anger and fear of failure can carry a founder through years of pain, but they also produce long nights where very little gets done and sharp elbows felt by everyone around you. atoms is what happened when he learned to build toward a future rather than against an enemy. -doing hard things is a reminder you can do more hard things. in the q&a ben remembers travis describing attacks by chinese ride-sharing companies as proof that, if he could survive china, the rest of the world would be manageable. travis still deliberately creates problems when things become easy. but the rate of problem creation cannot exceed the organization’s rate of problem-solving. such a fun talk and q+a with @travisk @bhorowitz @eriktorenberg ! check it out.
    @garrytanRT @VirtualElena: back in 2017 i was interning as an equities analyst at a fund in nyc, which had a 9am morning call every weekday. the pur…
    @MatthewBerman@eriktorenberg Banger