Industrial AI startup Atoms, founded by former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, has raised $1.7 billion in equity funding in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). As part of the investment, Ben Horowitz, co-founder of a16z, will join the company’s board.
The funding marks a major milestone for Atoms as the company consolidates its businesses, including CloudKitchens, under a single equity structure. Kalanick said this represents the next stage of Atoms, which he publicly launched earlier this year after operating in stealth for nearly 8 years.
Announcing the funding on X, Kalanick described the investment as “unfinished business” and wrote, “Fuel to complete the bits-to-atoms story arc we started at Uber, continued at CloudKitchens and will now finish at Atoms.”
Atoms was launched in March by bringing together CloudKitchens and City Storage Systems, the industrial real estate business focused on logistics and food production. The company is developing AI-powered industrial automation by combining software, sensors and robotics to modernise large-scale physical operations.
Rather than focusing on humanoid robots, Atoms is prioritising specialised industrial robots for sectors such as mining, transportation and food production. The company believes purpose-built robotic systems offer a faster path to commercial deployment than general-purpose humanoid platforms.
Kalanick said Atoms builds on the strategy that began with Uber’s transportation network and later expanded through CloudKitchens. He described transportation as the network layer of the physical economy and manufacturing as its processing engine, positioning Atoms as a platform designed to power industrial systems through AI.
Alongside Andreessen Horowitz, the funding round includes investments from Bain Capital, Uber, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel, and Alpha Square Group*. Debt financing partners include Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, and Barclays.
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