Uber founder Travis Kalanick has developed an AI Mining robot

Uber founder Travis Kalanick has a new company called Atoms focused on robotics that, according to its website, will operate in the food, mining, and transportation industries. Kalanick is rolling his existing ghost kitchen company, CloudKitchens, into Atoms. It’s not immediately clear how he plans to tackle mining and transportation. Atoms’ website says it will build a “wheelbase for robots,” and Kalanick said in a live interview with TBPN on Friday that his company will apply this wheelbase to “specialised robots” - not humanoid robots which seem to be all the craze at the moment.

“Humanoids have their place, but there’s a lot of room for specialised robots that do things in an efficient, sort of industrial-scale kind of way, which is sort of where we play,” he said.

To support the mining business, Kalanick said Friday that he’s on the precipice of acquiring Pronto, the autonomous vehicle startup focused on industrial and mining sites that was created by his former Uber colleague, Anthony Levandowski. Kalanick revealed Friday that he is already the “largest investor” in Pronto.

The Future of Mobility and Transport, a keynote by futurist Matthew Griffin

“The industrial thing is sort of like, probably, our main jam,” Kalanick told TBPN. Kalanick demurred on the idea of using Atoms robots to move people, at least in the near-term. “Once you crack movement in the physical world, there’s lots of people who want access to that.”

Earlier Friday The Information reported Kalanick was getting back into self-driving vehicles with “major backing” from Uber, and that he has reportedly told people he “wants to be more aggressive in rolling out self-driving technology than Waymo.” Uber didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Atoms’ website makes no mention of Uber. The Information first reported Kalanick was discussing acquiring Pronto.

Last year, Kalanick was said to be interested in buying the U.S. arm of Chinese self-driving vehicle company Pony AI with backing from Uber, though The Information said Friday that those talks ended.

Kalanick resigned from Uber in 2017 after a confluence of crises at the ride-hail company. At the time, the company was plagued by complaints of sexual harassment and discrimination, which sparked an external investigation that resulted in more than 20 employees being fired.

Before that, Kalanick had created a self-driving division at Uber in 2015. Levandowski played a big role in that project after Kalanick lured him away from Google. Uber was ultimately sued by Google for stealing secrets related to its own self-driving car project which eventually became Waymo. The two companies settled, but Levandowski was criminally charged and sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in the affair. The engineer received a last-minute pardon from President Trump at the end of his first term.

The company kept working on the project after Kalanick resigned, including after one of its test vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian in 2018. Kalanick’s successor, Dara Khosrowshahi, shuttered and sold the division to autonomous trucking company Aurora in 2020.

In a rare interview in March 2025, Kalanick expressed regret that Uber had abandoned developing its own self-driving cars.

First published on Fanatical Futurist on 14 June 2026.

311 Intelligence

What this means

Analysis by the 311 Strategic Intelligence Unit

The big bet is specialised robots first, general robots later. Kalanick is wagering that the first large returns in robotics will come from machines built for one job on controlled sites, such as mines, industrial yards and kitchens, rather than from humanoids. Our Starburst data supports that order. The sensing that site-specific autonomy needs is already mature: lidar is at the highest readiness level (TRL 9) and we expect it in wide use by 2030. The general intelligence a do-anything robot needs is further out: we expect Physical AI in wide use around 2037 and General Purpose Robots around 2039.

What it means by sector.

• Mining and heavy industry: closed sites with known routes are where autonomous vehicles can scale soonest, which is why Atoms is lining up Pronto, a start-up already focused on industrial and mining sites. We see operators who automate haulage and site logistics early gaining a cost lead that will be hard for others to close.
• Food: folding CloudKitchens into Atoms points to robotics moving into food preparation. We track Hospitality Service Robots as a Prepare trend, with wide use expected by 2030.
• Transport: The Information reports Uber backing for Kalanick's return to self-driving. We expect ride-hail apps to become robotaxi marketplaces in the early 2030s, and autonomous vehicles to reach wide use around 2032.

What to do now.

• List the repetitive, rule-bound tasks on your sites, in your fleets and in your kitchens that a specialised machine could take on within three to five years, and cost them.
• Treat humanoid robots as a later wave for most operations: we expect Factory Humanoid Robots to reach wide use around 2035.
• Build safety and oversight in from the start: Uber's 2018 fatality showed what is at stake. Runtime Assurance Monitors, the safety layer that takes over when a vehicle's AI misbehaves, are an Explore technology we expect in wide use by 2033.

The Starburst technologies behind this story

From the 311 Technology Starburst (first product, expected wide use and readiness):

Technology	Category	First product	Wide use	Action	TRL
Lidar	Sensors	1971	2030	Prepare	9
Vision-Language-Action Robot Models	Intelligence	2025	2031	Explore	6
Runtime Assurance Monitors	Security	2014	2033	Explore	8
Physical AI	Intelligence	2025	2037	Watch	7
Swarm Robotics	Robotics	2027	2037	Watch	7
General Purpose Robots	Robotics	2026	2039	Watch	6

And the trends they feed, from the 311 Trends Starburst:

Trend	Wide use	Action
Hospitality Service Robots	2030	Prepare
Robotics	2030	Prepare
Robotaxi Ride-Hail Marketplaces	2031	Explore
Autonomous Vehicles	2032	Explore
Factory Humanoid Robots	2035	Explore

How this moves the trend

This is Kalanick returning to the race he started. Uber first put autonomous cars on the streets in 2016 and unveiled an autonomous trucking business that same year. Then came the setbacks: Uber suspended its whole programme after an Arizona crash in 2017, and in 2018 killed off its self-driving truck division. Meanwhile rivals pressed on, with Waymo testing autonomous trucks in Texas and New Mexico. The difference this time is the target: industrial sites first, roads later.

Go deeper with 311

• The 311 Starburst Centre: every technology and trend above, with timelines and readiness.
• 311 Vantage: ask what specialised robots mean for your organisation and get a plain English executive brief.
• The Exponential Technology Codex and the Annual Trends Codex: the technologies and trends reshaping every industry.
• Book a briefing or keynote on the future of robotics, mining and transport for your board or leadership team.