Travis Kalanick returns with Atoms, backed by Ben Horowitz's biggest-ever check
rohanpaul_ai · x · 2026-08-20
In an a16z fireside chat, Uber founder Travis Kalanick pushes back on the "comeback" narrative: "I've been working my ass off the whole time. I just haven't been talking about it." After eight quiet years he landed the biggest check Ben Horowitz has ever written for Atoms, an industrial AI company treating manufacturing, real estate and logistics as the CPU, storage and network of the physical world.
His core lesson: build a "progress machine" — a culture of discovering valuable unknown truths, so you know what others don't and can do what others can't, accelerating change until you beat the "final boss".
Related event: Uber Founder Kalanick Resurfaces with Robotics Startup Atoms(2 posts)→
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