Travis Kalanick Launches Atoms Robotics Venture

Travis Kalanick, the co-founder and former chief executive of Uber Technologies Inc., announced on Friday the launch of Atoms, a Los Angeles-based company focused on developing specialized robotics for the food, mining, and transportation industries. The venture represents a rebranding of his existing real estate and ghost kitchen operator, City Storage Systems, which includes CloudKitchens, a provider of commercial kitchen spaces for delivery-only restaurants.

In a manifesto published on the Atoms website and during a livestreamed interview on the tech talk show TBPN, Kalanick described the company as emerging from eight years in stealth mode, with thousands of employees. He emphasized creating "gainfully employed robots" designed for productive tasks that enhance efficiency and abundance in industrial settings. "At Atoms we make gainfully employed robots, specialized robots with productive jobs that bring abundance to their owners and society at large," Kalanick wrote on the site. The company plans to develop a wheelbase platform to enable these robots, prioritizing industrial-scale applications over humanoid designs.

Kalanick, who was ousted as Uber's CEO in 2017 amid...