Atoms, Travis Kalanick’s Robotics Startup, Appoints Ex-Uber CFO as Finance Chief

An ex-Uber executive is joining Travis Kalanick’s robotics and industrial AI startup, Atoms, just weeks after it secured $1.7 billion in funding.

Gautam Gupta, who served as finance chief under Kalanick, announced on social media Wednesday that he has taken on the role of chief financial officer at Atoms. Gupta spent over four years at Uber, leaving in July 2017 shortly after Kalanick stepped down as CEO, although he had indicated plans to leave that May.

Gupta’s recruitment is part of Kalanick’s strategy to rebuild the Uber team at Atoms. Earlier this year, Atoms acquired the mining autonomy company Pronto, led by former Uber (and Google) self-driving engineer Anthony Levandowski. According to LinkedIn, several former Uber team members who worked with Kalanick are now with Atoms, previously known as CloudKitchens.

“On many levels, this funding round represents some unfinished business. It’s fuel to complete the bits-to-atoms journey we began at Uber, continued at CloudKitchens, and will now finish at Atoms,” Kalanick remarked during the announcement of the $1.7 billion funding round last month.

Uber participated as an investor in the funding round, re-establishing ties with the founder it ousted in 2017 amid various scandals and allegations of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination. Though Uber has not disclosed its investment amount, sources indicate it is around $100 million, a figure corroborated by TechCrunch.

Kalanick has articulated his vision for Atoms to explore mining, food, and transportation sectors, although his remarks have been more aspirational than detailed, stating a mission to “challenge the final boss, Nature and its fierce resistance to change.”

Gupta initially invested in Uber in 2012 while serving as a vice president at Goldman Sachs and joined the company in 2013.

“The primary reason I joined was – Travis. I believed he had a unique mix of genius and intensity that inspired me to invest in the person, not just the market,” Gupta said in his post on Wednesday. “Always the first in and the last out, breaking down barriers of regulations, unions, and city bureaucracies. Had he not been a pioneer in ridesharing, I’m not sure anyone else would have had the resilience to continuously face adversity and create a new market worth hundreds of billions from scratch.”

On Wednesday, Gupta announced that A*, the VC firm he co-founded in 2020 after three years at Opendoor, has invested in Atoms, marking the “largest investment in the history of our fund.” He is resigning from A* to assume the CFO position at Atoms, as noted in his LinkedIn profile.