CloudKitchens owner raises $1.7B to automate restaurants and more
The funding for Travis Kalanick's Atoms was led by Andreessen Horowitz and included support from Uber, Kalanick's previous venture.
July 23, 2026
Atoms, the newly formed parent company of CloudKitchens, has raised $1.7 billion to further its plan to automate restaurants, cars, and mining, CEO Travis Kalanick announced Wednesday on X.
The equity investment was led by formidable venture firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with support from others, including Uber, the company Kalanick co-founded and later left amid accusations that he’d fostered a toxic workplace.
Other contributors were Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A*, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel, and Alpha Square Group.
As part of the investment, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz will join Atoms’ board.
Previously, CloudKitchens had raised at least $1.25 billion across two funding rounds that valued the company at $15 billion as of late 2021.
In his X post, Kalanick said the latest funding will allow Atoms to merge its various businesses, which include CloudKitchens ghost kitchens, Lab37 food robots, and Pronto, a maker of autonomous mining vehicles that Atoms recently acquired.
And he said it will help Atoms finish the job he started at Uber of “[digitizing] the physical world,” or using software to control things like transportation and food production.
His vision for Atoms is to become the infrastructure for this digital world by developing software, sensors, robotics, and AI that can be used to automate entire industries, including commercial kitchens.
Atoms’ first entry in this effort is Bowl Builder, an automated assembly line for bowl-based meals. It’s designed to allow restaurants to operate with fewer staff members while producing faster and more consistent food. Bowl Builder is currently being tested in some CloudKitchens locations.
It’s part of a plan to combine delivery-only kitchens, robotics, and self-driving vehicles that Kalanick has said will make food delivery as affordable as buying groceries.
Atoms’ strategy is similar to that of Wonder, another company led by a successful startup founder (Marc Lore) looking to disrupt restaurants. Wonder plans to make food more affordable and convenient via a proprietary mix of food halls, meal kits, a delivery network, robotics, and AI. It has also raised billions to fund these efforts, including a $650 million Series D round last week.
Both companies are likely to face some challenges as they look to upend the status quo in the fiercely competitive restaurant industry.
In his X post, Kalanick wrote that Atoms’ biggest obstacle going forward will be nature and its resistance to change.
“Nature is going to throw everything it has at the builders in this new industrial age and it’s going to take humanity’s strongest to stay the course and get these complex systems and industries over the finish line,” he wrote.
About the Author
Joe Guszkowski
Senior editor, Restaurant Business
Joe Guszkowski is a senior editor with Restaurant Business covering technology and casual-dining chains.
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