Uber Founder Kalanick's Pitch to CS Grads: Automate Heavy Machinery, Skip the App Store
Portable_Solar_ZA · reddit · 2026-07-24
In a recent podcast, Uber founder and current head of industrial AI company Atoms, Travis Kalanick, offered unique advice to Stanford CS graduates worried that software engineering is no longer a safe career path: skip the app store and go automate two-million-pound machines carrying gold.
He shared Atoms' underlying business model — retrofit, not replace. Instead of asking mining companies to rip out tens of millions of dollars of existing equipment, the company builds a "no-entry mine" concept on top of current heavy machinery. This involves autonomous haulage and remote control, completely removing humans from the pit. Kalanick believes applying the Uber model to physical infrastructure is where the true scarcity lies today.
Related event: Uber Founder Urges Grads to Automate Heavy Machinery(3 posts)→
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