{"id":3491531,"date":"2026-08-05T21:26:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-05T21:26:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/05\/travis-kalanicks-robotics-venture-atoms-recruits-ex-uber-finance-leader-as-cfo\/"},"modified":"2026-08-05T21:26:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-05T21:26:40","slug":"travis-kalanicks-robotics-venture-atoms-recruits-ex-uber-finance-leader-as-cfo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/2026\/08\/05\/travis-kalanicks-robotics-venture-atoms-recruits-ex-uber-finance-leader-as-cfo\/","title":{"rendered":"Travis Kalanick\u2019s robotics venture Atoms recruits ex-Uber finance leader as CFO"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A former executive from Uber is now part of Travis Kalanick\u2019s robotics and industrial AI venture Atoms, just weeks after it secured $1.7 billion in funding.<\/p>\n

Gautam Gupta, who previously served as the finance chief under Kalanick, announced via social media on Wednesday that he has taken on the role of chief financial officer at Atoms. Gupta had a tenure of over four years at Uber before departing in July 2017, shortly after Kalanick stepped down as CEO. (Gupta had expressed his plans to leave earlier that May.)<\/p>\n

The hiring of Gupta continues Kalanick\u2019s effort to reunite former Uber colleagues at Atoms. This year, Atoms also acquired mining automation startup Pronto, led by Anthony Levandowski, a former self-driving engineer at Uber (and Google). LinkedIn shows that several key former Uber staff members who collaborated with Kalanick are now employed at Atoms, which was formerly known as CloudKitchens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many ways, this round represents some unfinished business. It provides the fuel to complete the bits-to-atoms narrative we initiated at Uber, furthered at CloudKitchens, and will now conclude at Atoms,\u201d Kalanick stated when announcing the $1.7 billion funding round last month.<\/p>\n

Uber participated in this funding round as an investor, bringing back together the company with the founder it ousted in 2017 amid a series of scandals and allegations of pervasive sexual harassment and discrimination. Uber has not revealed its exact contribution. The Information reported it as $100 million, a figure TechCrunch has also confirmed.<\/p>\n

Kalanick has expressed his vision for Atoms to focus on mining, food, and transportation, although his communications so far have leaned less toward specifics and more toward a desire to \u201cconfront the ultimate challenge, Nature and its strong resistance to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gupta invested in Uber in 2012 while serving as a vice president at Goldman Sachs and subsequently joined the company in 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he primary reason I joined was \u2014 Travis. I believed he embodied a unique blend of brilliance and drive that made me want to invest in the individual, not just the market,\u201d Gupta shared on Wednesday. \u201cHe was always the first to arrive and the last to leave, every single day. Challenging regulations, unions, city red tape, etc. Without his pioneering efforts in ridesharing, I doubt anyone else would have had the determination to overcome all the obstacles to establish an entirely new market worth hundreds of billions from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gupta mentioned on Wednesday that A*, the venture capital firm he co-launched in 2020 after spending three years at Opendoor, invested in Atoms, marking the \u201clargest investment in our fund’s history.\u201d Gupta is resigning from A* to assume the CFO position at Atoms, as noted in his LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/div>\n
\n

A former executive from Uber is now part of Travis Kalanick\u2019s robotics and industrial AI venture Atoms, just weeks after it secured $1.7 billion in funding.<\/p>\n

Gautam Gupta, who previously served as the finance chief under Kalanick, announced via social media on Wednesday that he has taken on the role of chief financial officer at Atoms. Gupta had a tenure of over four years at Uber before departing in July 2017, shortly after Kalanick stepped down as CEO. (Gupta had expressed his plans to leave earlier that May.)<\/p>\n

The hiring of Gupta continues Kalanick\u2019s effort to reunite former Uber colleagues at Atoms. This year, Atoms also acquired mining automation startup Pronto, led by Anthony Levandowski, a former self-driving engineer at Uber (and Google). LinkedIn shows that several key former Uber staff members who collaborated with Kalanick are now employed at Atoms, which was formerly known as CloudKitchens.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many ways, this round represents some unfinished business. It provides the fuel to complete the bits-to-atoms narrative we initiated at Uber, furthered at CloudKitchens, and will now conclude at Atoms,\u201d Kalanick stated when announcing the $1.7 billion funding round last month.<\/p>\n

Uber participated in this funding round as an investor, bringing back together the company with the founder it ousted in 2017 amid a series of scandals and allegations of pervasive sexual harassment and discrimination. Uber has not revealed its exact contribution. The Information reported it as $100 million, a figure TechCrunch has also confirmed.<\/p>\n

Kalanick has expressed his vision for Atoms to focus on mining, food, and transportation, although his communications so far have leaned less toward specifics and more toward a desire to \u201cconfront the ultimate challenge, Nature and its strong resistance to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gupta invested in Uber in 2012 while serving as a vice president at Goldman Sachs and subsequently joined the company in 2013.<\/p>\n

\u201c[T]he primary reason I joined was \u2014 Travis. I believed he embodied a unique blend of brilliance and drive that made me want to invest in the individual, not just the market,\u201d Gupta shared on Wednesday. \u201cHe was always the first to arrive and the last to leave, every single day. Challenging regulations, unions, city red tape, etc. Without his pioneering efforts in ridesharing, I doubt anyone else would have had the determination to overcome all the obstacles to establish an entirely new market worth hundreds of billions from scratch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gupta mentioned on Wednesday that A*, the venture capital firm he co-launched in 2020 after spending three years at Opendoor, invested in Atoms, marking the \u201clargest investment in our fund’s history.\u201d Gupta is resigning from A* to assume the CFO position at Atoms, as noted in his LinkedIn profile.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3491532,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3491531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3491531"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3491531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3491531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3491532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3491531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3491531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techingeek.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3491531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}