Atoms, the robotics company led by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick, closed a $1.7 billion equity financing round on Wednesday with backing from Andreessen Horowitz.

The investment is among the largest disclosed rounds to date in the physical AI sector, where funding has reached record levels in 2026 and companies are racing to deploy machines in warehouses, mines, and logistics networks where labor shortages and hazardous conditions have driven demand for automation.

Uber joins round for company led by former CEO

Andreessen Horowitz led the equity round, and general partner Ben Horowitz will join Atoms' board. New equity investors also include Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A*, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel and Alpha Square Group.

Uber, the company Kalanick co-founded, also participated in the round. The investment comes nearly a decade after Uber's board pushed Kalanick out as chief executive in 2017 following complaints involving sexual harassment, discrimination and workplace culture.

Kalanick described the deal as a form of reconciliation that extended beyond Uber. In a post on X, he said a collaboration with Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz had nearly happened in 2011. "In 2017 Uber suffered the consequences of not having Marc on the board – iykyk," he wrote. https://x.com/travisk/status/2079997954363117844

Debt partners were listed separately from the equity financing. The five banks named were Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, JP Morgan and Barclays. Atoms did not disclose the size of any loan facility.

Atoms operates as a holding company built around two businesses Kalanick developed after leaving Uber. One is CloudKitchens, his ghost-kitchen company. The other is Pronto, a heavy-industry automation company that Kalanick acquired in March 2026 from former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski, a central figure in the early development of self-driving technology at Google's autonomous vehicle program and later at Otto, the self-driving truck startup acquired by Uber.

The combined company will be organized into three divisions: Atoms Food, Atoms Mining and Atoms Transport. Those units are focused on food production, mining and heavy transport, sectors where major operators have already adopted autonomous systems at scale.

In his X post, Kalanick called Atoms an OEM that makes "atoms-based computers." He said the financing was "fuel to complete the bits-to-atoms story arc we started at Uber, continued at CloudKitchens and will now finish at Atoms."

Horowitz framed the announcement more directly. "Travis Is Back," he wrote on X. https://x.com/bhorowitz/status/2079998079034609720

Horowitz said purpose-built machines, rather than humanoid robots, are better suited to heavy-industry work. "The specialized ones are far better suited to most of those jobs," he wrote. He also emphasized productivity as the central opportunity.

"To repeat the same thing Uber did for transportation, or that computers did for the digital world: to make everything and everyone more productive," Horowitz said. He described that as the best use case for AI and robotics.

Robotics funding reaches record levels as Atoms withholds valuation

Capital has been flowing into robotics companies building machines that operate in the physical world. Global robotics funding reached $55.8 billion through early June 2026, according to Dealroom data. That total is nearly double the previous full-year record.

One day before Atoms' announcement, UK startup Humanoid raised $152 million at a $1.35 billion valuation, according to Reuters. On July 16, Grid Dynamics announced a physical AI partnership with Doosan Robotics, a deal that pointed to a sector shift from fundraising toward deployment.

AI model development has also accelerated. Cryptopolitan reported that Mistral released Robostral Navigate on July 8. The 8-billion-parameter model can direct a robot using a single camera and a plain-language instruction. In simulation, it scored 76.6% on the R2R-CE unseen benchmark.

Kalanick's X post outlined the company's broader vision, but Atoms has not disclosed a post-money valuation. It also has not provided a debt figure or released commercial traction metrics for its Food, Mining or Transport divisions.