Atoms, the physical AI holding company built by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, has raised $1.7 billion in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Ben Horowitz joins the board and Uber returns as an investor, marking the largest robotics-adjacent equity round of July 2026.
a16z leads, Uber rejoins Kalanick
Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, K5 Global, SV Angel and Alpha Square Group also joined the round alongside Uber, ending a nine-year public estrangement between Kalanick and the ride-hailing giant that ousted him in 2017. Horowitz declared “Travis Is Back” on X, framing Atoms as a bet on operators who can drive AI into the physical economy.
Bits-to-atoms across food, mining, and transport
Atoms consolidates CloudKitchens and Pronto, the heavy-industry automation firm founded by former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski, into three business units: Atoms Food, Atoms Mining and Atoms Transport. Kalanick has talked publicly about building a “wheelbase for robots” and previously explored acquiring the U.S. arm of self-driving vehicle company Pony AI with Uber backing.
Where the money goes
Kalanick framed the funding as “unfinished business,” describing a plan to build “atoms-based computers where CPU is manufacturing, storage is real estate and network is transportation.” The round adds to a summer of megadeals in physical AI — from Neura Robotics’ $1.4B Series C to Apptronik’s $520M Series A — underscoring how quickly capital is consolidating around the operator-founder archetype.
Reporting based on coverage from TechCrunch, Yahoo Finance, PYMNTS and Benzinga.