Travis Kalanick's Atoms raises $1.7 billion led by Andreessen Horowitz

Travis Kalanick's robotics company Atoms has raised $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz, TechCrunch reported. Ben Horowitz will join the company's board after the investment. Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, and others participated, and Uber also joined the round. Atoms is described as a rebranded holding company built atop Cloud Kitchens, the ghost kitchen project Kalanick has pursued since leaving Uber. When he revealed the Atoms name in March, Kalanick said he had acquired Pronto, the heavy industry automation company run by former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski. Kalanick has said he wants to expand into mining with Atoms and to build a wheelbase for robots. In a post on X about the fundraise, Kalanick wrote that the round is unfinished business and fuel to complete a bits-to-atoms story arc started at Uber and continued at CloudKitchens. Ben Horowitz posted that Atoms will focus on making people more productive in the physical world. Kalanick did not give detailed product plans but indicated much of the funding would go toward hiring.