About Atoms

Atoms is Travis Kalanick’s physical automation company. 

Atoms is building specialized robots and the real estate, software, and logistics around them, organized around one idea Kalanick calls “digitizing the physical world.”

The name is the thesis: treat atoms like bits.

The company runs three verticals: Food, Mining, and Transport.

Atoms isn’t new. It’s the rebrand of City Storage Systems, the holding company Kalanick took control of in 2018 for roughly $150 million after leaving Uber, and the parent of ghost kitchen operator CloudKitchens. For eight years the company operated in near-total stealth, to the point that employees were not allowed to list it on LinkedIn. Kalanick brought it into the open on March 13, 2026 with a manifesto on the Atoms site and a live TBPN interview (below). Under the Atoms umbrella sit CloudKitchens, restaurant software platform Otter, kitchen robotics lab Lab37, and autonomous mining company Pronto, acquired in April 2026.

Atoms has raised around $1.3 billion, backed by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Microsoft, Craft Ventures, and Social Capital, most recently at a reported $15 billion valuation. The company operates in roughly 30 countries with thousands of employees.

The Opportunity

Software already automated the parts of the economy made of information: language, math, media, code. The physical economy, the part that grows, mines, makes, and moves real things, is still mostly manual. That is what Atoms is going after.

The bet is specialized machines over general-purpose ones. Most robotics talk today is about humanoids. Kalanick thinks a humanoid is the wrong tool for heavy industrial work. If you need a thousand pancakes an hour, you do not want a robot arm flipping them one at a time. You want a machine built for that exact job. Atoms calls these “gainfully employed robots,” specialized systems that earn their keep, all built on a shared platform the company calls a “wheelbase for robots.”

Three markets, each large on its own:

1. Food. The US restaurant industry employs over 13 million people, and labor costs keep climbing.

2. Transport. The connective tissue between the other two, and the piece Atoms has said the least about so far.

3. Mining. Labor is short while demand for critical minerals is surging. Autonomous trucks pull people out of dangerous work and run around the clock.

Industrial automation is already a $200 billion market. Atoms wants the platform underneath it.

Why It’s Working

• Real footprint. CloudKitchens has run commercial kitchens for a decade, serving chains like Sweetgreen, Wendy’s, and Chick-fil-A, with over 2,000 units in North America.

• Software reach. Otter grew from an internal tool into a full restaurant operating system. It reportedly handled 18% of US food delivery orders in 2024. Nobody else sees the food economy at that resolution.

• Mining is already running. Pronto’s autonomous mining trucks are working today, not a prototype. Pronto has hauled more than two million tons at a Heidelberg Materials quarry in Texas, has a global deal covering 100-plus trucks, and powers Komatsu’s Smart Quarry program. It retrofits existing trucks in weeks, not months.

• A new customer, fast. In April 2026, days after the acquisition closed, Pronto signed Mariana Minerals to run autonomous trucks at a copper mine in Utah.

• Serious talent. Lab37, the food robotics arm, is run by Eric Meyhofer, who led Uber’s self-driving unit. Pronto brings Anthony Levandowski, one of the founding engineers behind Google’s self-driving program.

Why We’re Interested (LFG POV)

Atoms is a bet on Travis Kalanick (founder of Uber).

Once in a while a founder comes along who does not just build a company, he bends an entire industry around his idea. Kalanick is one of them. He took Uber from a napkin sketch to a $70 billion company and changed how the world moves. Founders like that are rare. Backing one on his next act is rarer. That is the whole thesis. When Kalanick decides to spend the next decade on something, we want in.

And he is not starting from zero. While the rest of the industry argued about humanoid demos, Kalanick spent eight years quietly building a real operating company. Same playbook that built Uber: own the hard parts, outrun the incumbents, let scale compound. This time pointed at food, mining, and transport.

It also lands right in the middle of our thesis. Our portfolio is built around companies automating and reindustrializing the physical world, and the winners share one trait: they own the whole stack, hardware to software to deployment. Atoms is that playbook, run by a founder who has already won at the largest possible scale.

Notable Investors

• 8VC

• Coatue

• Craft Ventures

• Microsoft

• Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund

• Social Capital

• Travis Kalanick (founder and largest single investor)

Press

1. TechCrunch: Travis Kalanick launches a new company called Atoms focused on robotics

2. CNBC: Uber ex-CEO Kalanick rebrands latest venture Atoms, moves into robotics

3. TechCrunch: Mariana Minerals taps Pronto to help automate a copper mine

4. The Next Web: Uber founder Travis Kalanick launches robotics company Atoms

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Notes

1. Limited Allocation: Allocation is limited. Priority will be given to LFG+ Members, then on a first come, first served basis among committed investors.

2. LFG+ Membership: LFG+ Members receive priority access to limited allocation and reduced economics - here are our membership details. To receive LFG+ benefits for this deal, you must activate your membership before the commitment deadline.

3. Limited Information: the information available to us and what we can share will be limited due to the nature of this deal.

4. Terms. Please note that these terms are subject to change until the allocation is finalized. The subsequent fund documents will govern.