ROBBRIEF
Travis Kalanick's new industrial robotics company, ATOMS, takes debt from five major banks as Andreessen Horowitz's Ben Horowitz joins the board to build factory robots.
A new industrial-robotics company, ATOMS, closed a $1.7 billion equity round this week, with debt from Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan, and Barclays, and a16z's Ben Horowitz joining the board. The company is led by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick.
ATOMS is positioning itself as an original equipment manufacturer building "atoms-based" computers: custom robots for specific industrial sectors. Named verticals include food infrastructure, mining, and a shared wheelbase for mobile robots, according to the company. The bet runs against the humanoid chase led by Figure, Apptronik, and Tesla Optimus.
In an essay on the company site, Kalanick argues that bipedal humanoids work for low-scale home tasks while industrial-scale throughput demands custom designs. He cites a kitchen robot capable of producing roughly 1,000 pancakes an hour as the kind of industrial-scale task humanoids cannot match at the same cost.
The raise folds Kalanick's prior CloudKitchens operations into a single equity structure, per The Robot Report. Other equity backers include Bain Capital, Uber, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A*, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel, and Alpha Square Group. Uber's participation reconnects the ride-hailing company with its ousted former CEO; Kalanick left in 2017 over sexual-harassment allegations. TechCrunch independently confirmed the round size and lead.
ATOMS has not disclosed shipped products, customers, pricing, or delivery timelines. The $1.7 billion funds a thesis, not a demonstrated result.