Analysis
Travis Kalanick's holding company Atoms is preparing for a hiring spree and a wave of acquisitions aimed at making it a serious player in the robotaxi business, and has held talks with Uber about how the ride-hailing giant could use Atoms' self-driving technology, TechCrunch reported on September 6.
Pulse covered Atoms' $1.7 billion raise in July, when Andreessen Horowitz led the round and Uber invested $100 million directly into the company. At the time, Atoms -- formerly known as City Storage Systems -- was best known as a holding company for Kalanick's dark-kitchen business CloudKitchens and Lab37, a unit exploring automation for commercial kitchens. What's changed since is the scope: Atoms has acquired Pronto, an autonomous-mining startup led by Anthony Levandowski, Uber's former self-driving chief, and robotaxis are now explicitly part of the company's plans rather than a side bet.
Why This Reads as Unfinished Business
Kalanick has described the current push as "unfinished business," a framing that carries real history. Uber's original self-driving unit, Advanced Technologies Group (ATG), was effectively forced into a fire sale to Aurora Innovation in 2020 after a costly trade-secrets lawsuit from Waymo centered on Levandowski, who had brought self-driving technology from Google to Uber. Levandowski pleaded guilty to trade secret theft in 2020 and was later pardoned; his return to a Kalanick-controlled company building autonomous vehicle technology closes a loop that started with one of the messiest chapters in either man's career.
The Competitive Field Atoms Is Entering
Atoms would be a late entrant into a robotaxi market that already has clear leaders. Waymo operates a fleet Alphabet has said runs between 3,500 and 4,000 vehicles across 14 US cities, expanding into Denver, San Diego and Tampa this month alone. Amazon's Zoox has launched paid service in Las Vegas, including airport routes. Tesla's Cybercab began carrying paying riders in Austin this week with just 45 registered vehicles -- a scale gap Pulse covered in the Cybercab's rocky public debut. Against that field, Atoms has no deployed vehicles, no regulatory approvals disclosed, and no announced timeline -- only a stated intent and one acquisition.
What the Uber Talks Actually Mean
The more interesting detail may be Uber's own position. Uber invested $100 million in Atoms in July and is reportedly discussing how it might use Atoms' robotaxi technology -- a notable reversal for a company that sold off its own self-driving unit five years ago and has instead built its robotaxi strategy around partnerships with Waymo, WeRide and other AV developers. If Uber ends up integrating Atoms-built vehicles into its network, it would mark Uber re-entering AV development by proxy through a company run by its former CEO, rather than through an internal program.
Atoms has not disclosed a robotaxi timeline, funding earmarked specifically for the effort, or regulatory filings in any state. The Pronto acquisition gives it autonomous-vehicle engineering talent and technology built for mining environments -- a meaningfully different operating domain than dense urban robotaxi routes, and a gap the company will need to close before any of this becomes a deployed product rather than a stated ambition.
