Travis Kalanick is back, and this time, he's being brought back with real money. The robotics company founded by the Uber co-founder, Atoms, has just closed a $1.7 billion funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz also joining the board of Atoms. Bain Capital, Fifth Wall and other institutions also participated as co-investors.

The most intriguing detail is that Uber also appears on the list of investors in this round. This reconnects Kalanick with the company he founded, which he was forced to step down from as CEO in 2017 due to allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination, as well as a toxic workplace culture.

Atoms is essentially a rebranded holding company, with its foundation being the project Kalanick has been working on since leaving Uber — a ghost kitchen business called Cloud Kitchens. When he unveiled the new name this March, he announced that he had acquired Pronto, an industrial automation company led by Anthony Levandowski, one of his former Uber colleagues. Kalanick also stated that he wanted to expand into the mining sector through Atoms, extending what Pronto currently does for vehicles in mines. Last year, there were reports that he intended to acquire the US operations of Chinese autonomous driving company Pony.ai with Uber's support, but a March report from The Information said the talks had fallen through.

In the X post announcing the funding, Kalanick did not elaborate on what Atoms exactly aims to build, only referring to this round as a "unfinished mission." He wrote that this fuel would be used to complete the story arc that started at Uber, continued with Cloud Kitchens, and now concludes with Atoms — the journey "from bits to atoms." Sixteen years ago, he began a journey to digitize the physical world — using software to understand, predict, and control the physical world, building a "computer based on atoms" with manufacturing as its CPU, real estate as its storage, and transportation as its network.

Kalanick said he wants Atoms to create a "platform for robots."

"Travis is back," said Horowitz, who posted almost simultaneously, with no attempt to hide his enthusiasm. He said that entrepreneurs who can move the old and heavy parts of the economy are extremely rare, requiring both grit and a broad span from software architecture to mechanical engineering, and Kalanick is such a person. Horowitz wrote that the entire point of Atoms is to make people more productive in the physical world — to repeat Uber's transformation of mobility and the computer's transformation of the digital world, making everything and everyone more productive.

Kalanick didn't specify details, but between the lines, it seems that a significant portion of this money will go toward hiring. He wrote that those who change the world will eventually face the ultimate boss — nature, and its fierce resistance to change; in the new industrial era, nature will do everything it can to hinder builders, and only the most resilient humans can push these complex systems and industries across the finish line.