Descriptions:
Travis Kalanick, co-founder of Uber, joins Andreessen Horowitz partners Ben Horowitz in this wide-ranging conversation about his return to entrepreneurship with Atoms, his new stealth-mode company focused on bringing software-style efficiency to the physical world. Kalanick walks through the early fundraising mechanics behind Uber’s Series B — including his “uncapped anchor” auction strategy — and reflects candidly on how the absence of a16z on Uber’s board shaped the company’s turbulent 2017.
The conversation turns to Kalanick’s central thesis: that AI and computation applied to atoms — manufacturing, logistics, real estate, and food preparation — represents an even larger opportunity than digital AI alone. Drawing on his experience running Uber’s AI lab and a recent trip to China to evaluate autonomous vehicle companies, he argues that the physical world offers far more variables and stochastic complexity than the digital one, making it the ideal domain for modern machine learning. He describes autonomous food delivery, digitized manufacturing, and robotics as the pillars of Atoms’ portfolio strategy.
Kalanick also shares lessons on building in stealth, the psychological profile of the entrepreneur who “keeps playing” after achieving wealth, and the parallels between Uber’s disruption of transportation and what he believes AI-driven automation will eventually do across every physical industry.
📺 Source: a16z · Published July 22, 2026
🏷️ Format: Podcast
