Travis Kalanick has brought another former Uber executive to his robotics and industrial AI startup, Atoms. Gautam Gupta shared on social media on Wednesday that he is taking over as the chief financial officer at Atoms. This hiring decision comes just a few weeks after Atoms successfully raised $1.7 billion in fresh funding. Gupta previously served as the finance chief under Kalanick during the early days of Uber.
Gupta spent more than four years at Uber before leaving in July 2017. His departure happened just a few weeks after Kalanick stepped down as the chief executive officer of Uber. Gupta had already announced his intention to leave that May. Before working inside Uber, Gupta backed the company in 2012 while serving as a vice president at Goldman Sachs. He officially joined Uber as an employee in 2013.
Bringing in Gupta fits a clear pattern of Kalanick reuniting with past colleagues at Atoms. Earlier this year, Atoms purchased Pronto, a mining autonomy startup led by Anthony Levandowski, who previously worked at both Uber and Google. Public profile data on LinkedIn indicates that several other top former Uber employees who previously worked alongside Kalanick are now employed at Atoms. The enterprise was previously known under the name CloudKitchens.
When Kalanick revealed the $1.7 billion funding round last month, he explained his perspective on the venture. He wrote that the round felt like unfinished business to complete the story arc that started at Uber, continued at CloudKitchens, and would now conclude at Atoms. Interestingly, Uber participated in this funding round as an investor. This reunited Uber with the founder whom the company forced out in 2017 following various scandals and complaints about widespread sexual harassment and discrimination.
Uber has not publicly revealed the exact financial contribution it made to Atoms. However, both The Information and TechCrunch confirmed that Uber contributed $100 million to the round. Kalanick has stated publicly that he wants Atoms to focus heavily on mining, food, and transportation sectors. Despite these broad categories, his public statements about the startup emphasize a desire to challenge nature and resistance to change rather than sharing narrow product specifics.
Gupta explained his reasoning for joining the new enterprise directly on social media. He stated that the single biggest reason he joined was Travis Kalanick himself. Gupta noted that he believed Kalanick possessed a unique mix of genius and intensity that made him want to bet on the person rather than the market. Gupta praised Kalanick for being the first person in and the last person out every day while breaking down walls of regulations, unions, and city bureaucracies.
Before taking the CFO role at Atoms, Gupta co-founded the venture capital firm A* in 2020 after spending three years at Opendoor. A* participated in the recent Atoms financing event, which Gupta described as the largest investment in the history of their fund. Gupta is officially stepping down from his position at A* to assume his new leadership responsibilities at Atoms according to his LinkedIn profile.
Atoms will now integrate Gautam Gupta into its leadership structure as the startup begins deploying its newly secured capital across industrial AI and robotics projects.
