via TechCrunch
Travis Kalanick’s Robotics Startup Atoms Appoints Former Uber Finance Chief as CFO
Travis Kalanick’s robotics and industrial AI startup Atoms has brought another former Uber executive into the fold. Gautam Gupta, who served as Uber’s finance chief under Kalanick, announced on social media Wednesday that he has joined Atoms as its new chief financial officer. The appointment comes just weeks after Atoms raised $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Gupta, who spent more than four years at Uber before departing in July 2017—just weeks after Kalanick resigned as CEO—takes on the CFO role at a pivotal time for the startup. His move continues a pattern of Kalanick reassembling his former Uber leadership team at Atoms. Earlier this year, the company acquired mining autonomy startup Pronto, led by Anthony Levandowski, a former Uber and Google self-driving engineer. According to LinkedIn, several other former Uber executives who worked closely with Kalanick have also joined Atoms, which was previously known as CloudKitchens.
Kalanick has framed the recent funding as a continuation of a long-term vision. “On many levels, this round is a bit of unfinished business. Fuel to complete the bits-to-atoms story arc we started at Uber, continued at CloudKitchens, and will now finish at Atoms,” he wrote last month when announcing the raise.
Notably, Uber itself participated in the funding round, marking an unexpected reconciliation between the company and its ousted founder. Uber has not disclosed its exact investment, though The Information reported it at $100 million—a figure TechCrunch has independently confirmed.
Kalanick has said Atoms will focus on mining, food, and transportation, though his public comments about the startup have leaned philosophical. He has described the mission as going “up against the final boss, Nature and its fierce resistance to change.”
Gupta’s connection to Kalanick predates his time at Uber. He first invested in the company in 2012 while a vice president at Goldman Sachs, then joined the ride-hailing giant in 2013. In his social media post, Gupta explained his decision to join Atoms: “The single biggest reason I joined was—Travis. I believed he possessed a magical mix of genius and intensity that made me want to bet on the person, not the market. First one in, last one out, every day. Breaking down walls of regulations, unions, city bureaucracies, etc. Had he not pioneered ridesharing, I don’t think anyone else had the fortitude to fight through one adversity after another to create a whole new market worth hundreds of billions out of nothing.”
Gupta also revealed that A*, the venture capital firm he co-founded in 2020, invested in Atoms—a move he called the “largest investment in the history of our fund.” To take on the CFO role at Atoms, Gupta is stepping down from his position at A*, according to his LinkedIn profile.
As Atoms scales its operations and expands across robotics and industrial AI, Gupta’s financial expertise and deep history with Kalanick position him as a key figure in the startup’s next chapter.