City Storage Systems (CSS) CEO Travis Kalanick at the Future Investment Initiative (FII) Institute Priority conference on Friday, February 21, 2025 in Miami, Florida, USA.
Zack Bennett Bloomberg | Getty Images
Uber Founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick said Friday that the company is renaming its latest venture “Atoms” and expanding beyond food into mining and transportation.
After being forced to resign from Uber in 2017, Kalanick joined City Storage Systems as CEO the following year. City Storage is the parent company of ghost kitchen operator Cloud Kitchens, which Kalanick has rapidly grown to reportedly be valued at $15 billion by 2022.
Kalanick, who founded Uber in 2009, said on Friday’s TBPN podcast that Atoms has operated in stealth for eight years with “thousands of employees.” And on the new Atoms website, Kalanick wrote nearly 1,700 words explaining his mission.
“Today, we are expanding our physical world computing portfolio into the mining and transportation industries and changing our company name to Atoms,” Kalanick wrote. Regarding the technology, he added, “At Atoms, we are creating robots that can be used for profit, specialized robots with productive tasks that bring wealth to their owners and to society as a whole.”
The Information reported Friday that Kalanick is preparing to unveil a new robotics and self-driving car company with the backing of Uber, citing people familiar with the matter.
“Up until today, I was running a company called City Storage Systems, and it was basically about the future of food,” Kalanick told TBPN. He said the concept is to make the delivery of prepared meals more efficient than grocery shopping.
On Atoms’ website, Kalanick said the company is focused on three subcategories: Atoms Food, which is “infrastructure for better food,” Atoms Mining, which provides “more productive mines,” and Atoms Transport, which is a “wheelbase of robots.”
The CloudKitchens website is still live. The company operates commercial kitchens that can be used by large and small restaurants to support delivery, pickup, and food production.
On Atoms’ website, Kalanick says he joined the venture after leaving Uber “heartbroken.”
“I bled but I did not die,” Kalanick wrote. “I got up and fought and got back into the arena and got back to my mission. I got back to building.”
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