Travis Kalanick, former CEO of Uber, appeared on the "I'm Back" podcast with Ben Horowitz, discussing his entrepreneurial journey, the missed opportunity for Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) to invest in early Uber, and his new venture, Atoms, which evolved from CloudKitchens.
Horowitz highlighted the missed A16Z investment in Uber's Series B in 2011, asserting that if A16Z (specifically Mark Andreessen) had been on Uber's board, the company's tumultuous 2017 wouldn't have happened. Kalanick recounted the fundraising process, where he ran a "winner takes all auction" for the lead investment. A16Z initially agreed to a $375 million pre-money valuation, but then pulled back, offering only $210 million after an internal partnership meeting. This left Kalanick feeling betrayed and forced him to restart the auction, eventually leading to Shawn at Menlo Park investing. Horowitz conceded his regret, noting he had passed the deal to Mark and John O'Ferrell due to his own heavy board commitments, and the subsequent loss of the deal was a source of "torture." Both agreed that A16Z's involvement would have made Uber a "considerably larger and more important" company, having dominated food delivery and becoming a leader in autonomous driving.
Kalanick's departure from Uber in 2017 was followed by an intense period of lawsuits and investigations. He admitted he'd gotten "way too close to the line," failing to adapt Uber's "pirate" mentality to its "navy" status. He illustrated this with the internal project name "shoplifting" (to recruit Lyft drivers), which was eventually changed to the more corporate "North American Championship Series" (NACS) after board intervention.
Emerging from this "hell," Kalanick started CloudKitchens (now Atoms) in 2018. He joined a buddy's nascent real estate venture just three months after leaving Uber, acquiring it when it had only six employees. For Kalanick, it was a "soulmate idea" – a deep attraction to complexity and an opportunity to build. The vision for CloudKitchens was to make "the preparation and delivery of a quality meal so efficient that it approaches the cost of going to the grocery store," effectively doing "to the kitchen what Uber did to the car." This involved creating an "Internet food court" with manufacturing (automated production/robotics) and logistics (robotic couriers) infrastructure.
Kalanick operated CloudKitchens in "stealth mode" for years to shield his team from the negative media scrutiny he faced post-Uber. This "hard mode" approach, he explained, fostered a culture of "internal correctness versus external validation," where employees found fulfillment in their work, not in public recognition. The company expanded to hundreds of facilities in 30 countries under various names, making it difficult for the media to track.
The overarching vision, which Kalanick calls "Industrial AI," is about "digitizing the physical world" through an "atoms-based computer." He likens manufacturing to a CPU, real estate to storage, and transport/logistics to a network. This framework, which began forming at Uber, applies computer science principles to the physical world. The fundraise for Atoms formalized this by combining CloudKitchens (food/real estate) with an autonomous transport arm and the acquisition of Pronto, an autonomous mining company founded by former Uber autonomy lead Anthony Levandowski. Mining, with its significant safety and productivity gains through automation, became a critical part of this "physical automation to transform industries."
Horowitz underscored that success often comes down to the "great entrepreneur," not just the idea, drawing parallels to Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Kalanick, one of the rare wealthy individuals who wanted to "keep playing," emphasized that his motivation was "not as much about where you start, it's about why you start" and the passion to build. He is now focused on scaling Atoms and its three core industries – food, mining, and transport – and is actively recruiting "epic leaders" for the next phase of growth, having emerged from stealth to publicly share his ambitious vision.