Travis Kalanick on Building Atoms After Uber

Key Takeaway

Treat any physical-world problem as a system: identify the “processor” that transforms materials, the “memory” that stores them, and the “network” that moves them. Today, map one workflow you use—meal prep, inventory, commuting, or deliveries—and find its slowest manual handoff. Then test one small automation, standardization, or delegation that reduces friction. Progress often comes not from a better app, but from redesigning how the physical work gets done.

Episode Overview

Travis Kalanick describes Atoms’ ambition to apply software, sensors, robotics, and AI to physical industries such as food production, mining, manufacturing, and logistics. He reflects on lessons from Uber—especially culture, intensity, trust, and change resistance—and argues that industrial automation could define the next industrial revolution.

Full Transcript

Transcript of Travis Kalanick on Building Atoms After Uber from A16Z. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

We are competing for the next industrial revolution. People asked: are you angry with Uber or is it eating away at you? When you fall in love again, you do n't remember your ex very much. We had an incredibly detailed plan on how to not draw attention to what we were doing. Many of the things that would eventually happen to Uber, we are doing now. These are essentially several trillion dollar industries that will be automated. We talk about digital AI and its impact on business, but these industries are huge in their own right.

Do you think you have achieved success because of your actions or despite them? If you're not fighting for the best idea, then what idea are you fighting for? You are fighting for a mediocre idea that will make you worse off than if you had chosen the best one. The real question is , when are you going to buy Uber? Ahem. Okay, first of all, I do n't even know how I got here. You can't do this to us . How did I end up here? How did I get here?

What? What? I have much better friends. Now you do n't feel it. Okay, you don't feel it. I thought it was really , you know, I have great friends. They weren't invited tonight, but they are good friends. Well, that's true. Okay, I think many people know that this is my thing, and you hear me talk about it all the time: digitizing the physical world, from bits to atoms, in that vein. Um, you know, some people say: oh yeah, physical AI, of course it will talk about that, that's logical.

We've been doing this for a long time, okay? This is a continuation of many of the great things we did back in the Uber days. So, I'm going to show you a video from 10 years ago. Think of a bit, the building block of the digital world. It was invented only 70 years ago, yet in its short life it has changed the way we communicate, do business, and live in almost every aspect of our lives. For Uber, the bit represents our technology. It is complex, precise and perfect.

But when it is realized, it becomes light and graceful. And if you think a bit is important, think about an atom. Originating 13.8 billion years ago, the atom is responsible for everything from the BLT sandwich to moms around the world and New York City. And for us, the atom means the cities that are rapidly developing, the goods that we transport from place to place, and, most importantly, the people we serve. Until recently, atoms and bits existed in completely different worlds. But then something happened. At Uber, we asked, "What if we brought these worlds together?" What would that look like?

It looks like this. We create safe and affordable transportation options like UberPool and UberX. We create more efficient and reliable ways to provide people with everything they need. We deliver freshly prepared meals from the most popular iconic restaurants in minutes. And once upon a time—the safe and efficient movement of people and things on a huge scale. Most of us rarely, if ever , think about bits or atoms. We think about how to get from one place to another, about the people close to us, about the millions of small events that happen in the world every day.

About humanity. Uber succeeds primarily because we think about people. But our method is our secret. We strive to create industries that serve people, not the other way around. I constantly talk about the digitalization of the physical world. I've been doing this for 10 years. I think many at Uber are tired of this and are saying, “ Enough is enough. Please stop talking about bits and atoms. This is madness. "I don't even understand what you're talking about." Listen, we know what beats are. The world of bits is a computer.

And those of us who are engineers, computer scientists, etc., and those of us who are not—we know what it is . Three basic computing resources: The processor processes bits. Memory stores bits . A network moves bits from point A to point B. But if you digitize the physical world, you treat atoms as bits. You ask, “Okay, I know that a processor processes bits. "And what processes atoms?" This is manufacturing, or digitalized manufacturing. Memory stores bits. And what preserves atoms? This is real estate. The network moves bits from point A to point B.

And what moves atoms? This is transportation or logistics. We didn't quite think so. We were close, but we didn't really see it that way at the time , but Uber was a network for the physical world. Digitized, but not completely. How do you see Waymo on the roads. Okay, now we're getting close to that. Sure, I think people still run them from the Philippines or something, but they're going digital. But the thing is, and this is interesting for entrepreneurs in general, especially in the physical world, the digitalization of manufacturing and real estate still has a long way to go.

A huge amount of innovation is still ahead. And so we moved forward. We worked very hard . A lot of people think I'm back, and I'm like, " Dude, I've been working hard all this time . I just haven't talked about it ." Um, what if you were building computers based on atoms, digitizing manufacturing, real estate, and networking for the physical world, or, excuse me, processor, memory, and networking for the physical world? What if you were just an OEM that makes food computers, mining computers, or take any industry and add "computer" to it.

What if you were doing something like building industrial computers based on atoms. That's how we think about what we do. And you know, we look around, at the physical world. You look at Open AI, they're doing really well. Anthropic also shows good results. Ahem. But look around. Everything we see, whether it's this room or any other room or anywhere you go, everything you see has been grown, mined, manufactured or moved. All. So we view what we do as industrial AI. And I have a great short definition for this.

Systems of software, sensors, robotics, and AI used to automate the operations of entire industrial sectors . This is what we do. I don't know if anyone else does this . That is, there are people who do something like this, but they don't call it that. And we are one of the main players in this field. Of course? So, we're going to walk through a few of our atom-based computers. The first is a food computer. Atomic food. The infrastructure for better food, but the real question is, can you make a meal that will be prepared and delivered to you so efficiently that its cost comes close to the price at the grocery store?

You say, "Okay, that's a pretty good question." If you can do it, that would be great, but what does it take? This means that your production must be automated. So we have robotics that are essentially involved in food production. Let's say six to eight dollars per serving. Okay? Um, we have a lot of interesting things ahead of us that we're going to do. Um, you also need to be able to move the food, either inside the building where it's being prepared or through delivery robots, which I like to call autonomous burritos.

You are roboticizing production. You are roboticizing logistics and food transportation. But you still need a place to do it. This brings us back to a kind of "atomic" computer. Isn't that right ? You still need real estate, industrial real estate, where this robotic manufacturing and robotic logistics happens. This is our food computer. Extraction of atoms. We have a very cool mission . I became very interested in mining . I like it. I fall in love with it more and more every day . Um, more productive mines to support Earth's industry.

What creates superintelligence? Well, it's chips and energy. We know this. Where do chips come from? The chips are taken from the ground. Where does energy come from ? And many say: "Oh, it's from the sun." Yes, it's from the sun, but how do you get it from the sun? From materials made from the earth. Is n't that right? So being in the ground, at this level, which is almost a primitive of physical AI—this is an extremely interesting area, and when you automate this process, it's incredibly interesting.

So when we talk about mining, we mean... we go to the heads of gold mining companies and ask, " Do you want to get 20% more gold per year?" We haven't heard a refusal yet. But they say, "Prove it," and that's the most interesting part. Um, it means reducing operating costs, and by the way, these mines are quite dangerous, so making these places safer is also part of our goal. And so you say, "Okay, I like...when I talk about mining, I like to talk about digital storage." What is digital storage in mining?

This is called land. Is n't that right? This is storage for the mining computer. And this is a network, right? Because you are moving rock. This is a network. Um, that's me next to one of those vehicles . Look at this. Okay? I'm standing next to a TCP packet. I think only eight people understood what I just said. But look at this thing. Fully loaded, it weighs probably like 2 million pounds. Of course? And this is an autonomous mining machine powered by our technology. Apparently, about three drones were damaged during the filming of this video.

But the processor ( CPU) is also very interesting in the mining industry, right? For example, how to process material to obtain the metal and minerals we need for everything we do to move civilization and progress forward. There are a lot of really cool things that can be automated here . Have you ever seen anything like this? This is called flotation . You see it when you fly over them. Most people don't know what it is, but it's the process of separating material down to the pure metal or mineral you're trying to obtain .

By the way, this is a lithium plant. And of course, all of this has to be organized, so you need software, almost like an operating system for a computer, to move things around and make sure everything gets done. And we also have a vehicle that I call a robot wheelbase. It's not quite a computer, it's part of a computer. Unless you're doing humanoid robots, right? Humanoid robots are designed to perform small-scale tasks in a human environment. If you're doing large- scale, industrial tasks, you'll be building specialized machines that move and act in the physical world.

The key part is movement. If they move, they must have wheels. If they have wheels, you have to create a system of autonomy for these machines, this specialized robotics that is transforming the industry. And if you depend on just one or two existing companies, you wo n't get very far. So autonomy is kind of a critical piece or a critical platform that you first create for yourself. But there are many other industries it could be created for, right? We know Phelps is the guy with the gold medals, but I like to say the truck is full of silver medals.

Truth? Many consider ridesharing to be the "gold medal." What about food delivery? What about parcel delivery? What about personal autonomy? What about freight transportation? What about off-road autonomy, like in mining? There are many industries with a turnover of hundreds of billions of dollars that will be served by this specialized robotics created for industry. These computers are designed for industry. Here's a sort of breakdown of some of the really interesting, you could just take a few silver medals that exist. And I say, "Listen, if you build autonomy and you do it really fast , let's say faster than Waymo is doing it.

You can use the dark horse effect . I don't know if you're a Kentucky Derby fan or not, but there's a dark horse moment here that's pretty interesting. But just silver medals alone—that's just crazy. That's why I call what we're building machines of progress. And what is that , what does that mean? Well, I would say that our company culture is about discovering valuable unknowns. Because if you're good at finding valuable unknowns, that means you're going to know a lot of things that other people don't know.

And if you know a lot of things that other people don't know, you can do a lot of things that other people can't. And the better you are at finding those valuable truths, the more things you can do, and that means you're making changes faster and faster. That's progress. . This progress is what has driven civilization from the beginning. And it is now . But there is what I call the " final boss." The final boss of progress is the one you have to fight, and every entrepreneur in this room knows this.

It's called resistance to change. That's natural, because, you know, change is often bad. And so you have to provide a huge amount of progress for your change to happen. I like to draw analogies with -- we're almost done, guys. I like to draw analogies with the second industrial revolution. We don't really -- I think a lot of people here might not fully understand what happened 100, 150 years ago. But there are a lot of analogies between what happened then and what's happening now. By the way, we're all thinking, "Oh, founder mode, go ahead." Founder mode, guys.

150 years ago they were implementing founder mode for real. This is a photograph, an illustration. You see that guy on top has a gun. He's going to shoot Henry Frick. Henry Frick was Carnegie's partner. They revolutionized steel production. Everything that's ever been produced , all the buildings and structures that we see around us, all the infrastructure, everything, it all started with Carnegie and Frick. An anarchist broke into his office, shot him twice and stabbed him several times . He didn't die. While they were taking the bullets out of him, he kept working.

Founder's mode. Okay. By the way, there were a lot of other interesting things going on back then. Extremely interesting things. Okay, those of you who know about Westinghouse and Thomas Edison. Edison was a DC fan. Westinghouse was an AC fan. We know who won. Yes, I have a DC flashlight, but AC won because it could be transmitted over long distances. Edison got the wrong side of the equation, he got it wrong. But he wasn't going to to give up without a fight, so he used marketing—he was a real pioneer in spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

He was a real master of that. You know what he did? He would have public electrocutions of animals to show that alternating current was dangerous. He was a real initiator. We see that kind of thing in the modern world today. Got it? The analogies that they make, I'm just saying, okay? It could get on the Internet. It was the Homestead strike. Yes, the Homestead strike. It was the Carnegie and Frick thing that actually led to an assassination attempt. Actually. And it was, excuse me, a strike—the Homestead strike.

It was essentially a union issue, they wouldn't make concessions, and of course there was some kind of a fight. And that was the first big union situation in the modern sense. Probably the archetype of this phenomenon. And we're starting to see things like that, right? For example, let's go back to 2014, Uber -- there were strikes all over Europe and in all the big European cities. They were burning cars, doing crazy things to stop this progress. That's the final boss, resistance to change. And, you know, they say history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

Okay. Not everyone can read this. I see. So, Uber and Lyft drivers are now protesting outside the Waymo office. I see? There's what? Okay, fair enough. You see, this happens. I see. But, we're moving progress forward. There will be resistance. It will happen, and this room is full of entrepreneurs, extremely cool entrepreneurs, so we have to be steadfast. We have to be determined. Like those guys that I invited in the letter, right? We have Ford, we have Carnegie, we have J.P. Morgan. We have all these people.

Westinghouse—right . We have to look at ... We always think we did it first, but there were guys who did it harder, definitely better than us, always. They went to school up the snow both ways, I swear. Got it? And they had these things, right? They had that same knack. Right? And what you see in the press about what knack is, it's not always true. Look at that, empathy. But how do you lead 20,000 people and direct them to do a great mission if those 20,000 people are bright, optimistic, good people?

How do you do that? You can't do that by being a bad person. But you have to be tough. I don't know if you have to be as tough as Frick, but you have to, you have to go all out. Um, there are many, many things that we have to keep in the field. vision, as entrepreneurs, and we have to do that, and by the way, the people who support us, or the leaders who also do wonders. You have to be all of those things at the same time.

Developing faith in a newbie in the company, we have what we call the heart of a champion. 23 points for the Golden Gophers in their championship. So they're really hoping to get a lot this weekend. So we have this thing called the heart of a champion, which is... You know, in life, sometimes you get knocked down. Like what just happened to her. But if you give it your all on the field, and when you get knocked down, you keep getting up, failure is really hard. Right?

You can make it louder. And it's just something that we believe in our company, and I think that's what most successful entrepreneurs believe in . And so, you know, look, a lot of people say, "Hey, Travis is back." Or, you know, I think it might even have been in your invitation. But I've actually been working for the last 8 years. I just haven't talked about it. And so it's good to come back in this format, because I've been kind of in a cave for a while.

And I want to thank everyone for being here, and I think Eric and Ben and I are going to have a great conversation, and again, thank you very much. Yeah, we're ready. So the reason why people liked our podcast, our first episode together, is that we got right to the point. Right to the point. So we'll do the same here, and then we'll open it up to a question and answer session. Eric is good at that. It makes me nervous. Okay, what do you have, Eric?

So, Travis, why did n't you buy Lyft? And do you regret it? What would you do if you could go back in time? Um, I think this is going to surprise a lot of people , but the culture at Lyft was very different from ours. Maybe it started with a purple... pink mustache. But I think it's interesting, right? When it comes to entrepreneurs who are in a position where you can acquire something. By the way, I got a lot of credit for that for a long time.

So... yeah, ... The cultures didn't mesh. Yeah, yeah, the cultures didn't mesh. And when you meet someone and you're going to acquire them, and there can be so much benefit from that. By the way, we were in a state of crazy war, probably spending a billion dollars a year on it, or some crazy amount of money. You want that to work. So you wouldn't change anything? I wouldn't change anything. And it's easy to say that now, but I got a lot of credit for that for a long time.

But the fact is, I was sitting across from these guys, and I just didn't... It was very clear that we were very different culturally, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to implement. Yeah. I... I agree with that by the way . I think that's... I mean... You'd have to imagine a counterfactual scenario if Travis still ran Uber. Because... What would that look like? Travis still runs Uber today? Well, I think that would have been the original culture , and the culture that they came to was a reaction to the resistance .

It ended up being a much softer culture than the original Uber culture, which was very distinct and very pronounced. My favorite thing in that culture document was meritocracy/ footstepping. Or footstepping, I don't remember exactly. I always thought it was footstepping, but there was meritocracy and footstepping. Footstepping? Yeah. Kind of like " sneeze on your feelings ." You know, we're here to build. We're going to do this like we're pushing as hard as we can, and yeah, you might get stepped on , but you have to keep going .

You have to keep moving forward. And that, to me, was the part that, um, got blurred when Travis left, and in a way, it was a major part. It was a very important element, at least from what I saw, you know, from the outside. Yeah, we rebranded the current company into Atoms. We call it "the best idea wins." But, you know, stepping on your toes is important because there are so many people who are not willing to fight for the best idea because they're afraid of upsetting someone.

And if you're not fighting for the best idea, what idea are you fighting for? You're fighting for a mediocre idea, a politically expedient idea. An idea that's going to make you less successful than if you had chosen the best idea. Yeah. And so having everyone focus on that—it's a cultural atmosphere that helps you win. Yeah, well, when Andy Grove was at Intel, he called it constructive confrontation. Yeah. Which is the only way to get better. You have to go through the challenges. There's a bet on Polymarket on when Travis comes back to Uber.

Or when they ask Travis to come back to Uber. But the real question is, when are you guys going to buy Uber? I think we still have a lot to achieve. It's interesting. It's fun. Um, so a lot of what I do, and you know, people ask, "What would you do if?" and I can't say that everything I would do at Uber, I'm doing now. There are a lot of things that I don't do. But it's an extension of those things. And a lot of what would happen to Uber over time, we're doing now.

And if those things come to pass and you take over , look, I've outlined what industrial AI is and where it's going over time . It's essentially multiple hundred billion or trillion dollar industries that are going to be automated. We're talking about digital AI and what it's doing for business. But those industries are big in their own right. So this is a new industrial era that's essentially coming . I compare it to the second industrial revolution. So if we're right and we're doing a good job, then that's a big thing, because you ask: will food production be fully automated?

Will food production be automated? Will food delivery be automated? I think we'll all say yes . And if that Yes, there will be a service that will prepare and deliver food for less than going to the grocery store. And if it does, it will, the food industry will be completely revolutionized. Will mining be automated ? And if so, not just the movement of materials, but every step of the mining process. So what is a mining company? It's just a property owner. It's going to be a complete revolution, a multi-trillion dollar market, and there are many of them.

And, um, well, we have to... Now we have to deliver. So. Tell me, how are you different as a founder, building Atoms, compared to how you built Uber? What did you change? What did you keep the same? Looking back, do you think you were successful because of what you did or in spite of it? Um, look, some of the way I did things at Uber is very much related to what I did before Uber. And what I did before Uber was ... I experienced failures. I mean, I barely managed to sell my company.

For example, for the first four years I worked without a salary. I had socks that said " blood, sweat and ramen." You know, those were the things that I got. And, um, when you're on the edge, living on welfare and trying to make ends meet, and then you go to something like Uber -- which is an ultra- market fit multiplied by a thousand -- but you still feel poor and you can't go to the store next week, you're getting too close to the edge. I was getting right up to the edge.

I guess some people could have guessed that. But I was getting right up to the edge, and the only way to know that I didn't get chalk on my shoes is to take a scanning electron microscope, magnify it from the opposite angle, and say, "Okay, that's fine." But if you get big and do the same thing, you're in a situation where you're bringing a lot of change very quickly, but you have n't built trust. Um, so I would say today I'm a few inches from that edge.

You don't have to watch a slow-motion replay to know that I did the right thing. I'm accountable for every decision I made at Uber. But now you don't have to guess. It's very transparent. You don't have to be that close to the edge. Um, another interesting thing, and I think sometimes, you know, new, young entrepreneurs who are just starting out don't really understand this. When you're on your third, fourth, maybe even fifth company , you become incredibly good at a lot of things. So things that used to take a day or three, a lot of stress and anxiety—"How do I do this?"—take me 45 minutes.

And that's great. There are things that don't bother you anymore because I've become so used to adversity that it's become the norm, and I don't get so annoyed anymore. But anger makes you a better person. entrepreneur. So I have to make sure I'm still "on fire." Well, because. That's the kind of angry energy. I'm going to tear everyone apart with me. You know, I think it's easier at 25. I don't know. I'm just not that kind of , I'll do anything, it's okay. Be yourself, man.

That's good . You get too used to the difficulty, and that's a bit of a problem. But, yeah, I guess those are some of the interesting changes, yeah. What's an example of something that used to take a lot of time that's now a lot easier? Like, look, I wrote a vision note when we launched Atoms a few months ago. I'm biased, of course, but I think it was a really well-written vision note. Ten or fifteen years ago, it would have taken me, I don't know, hundreds of hours.

Yeah. And here it just flowed. Yeah. I'm not saying I didn't think about it a lot, but when I was writing, it just came out easy. I'm like, " Wow." It just happened. Wow. Like the one I just did for this fundraiser: Okay, I procrastinated, but it happens. But when I wrote it, I was like, " Dude, we did it." It took like 45 minutes. I'm like, "This is amazing." It's about presentations, communication, strategy—I do it faster, and it's cool. Ben, how do you think Travis has changed since you met, and comment on that more broadly.

We have a lot of entrepreneurs in this room who are starting more than their first business. When you talk about cases where you, like Travis, have huge success but make mistakes along the way, what lessons do you take away for the future and what do you try to keep and continue because that's what got you to success ? You know, I think that's a very apt description: he thought he was in survival mode when he had 20,000 people working for him, and that idea is dangerous for such a big organization.

It's dangerous on two levels. One, it's dangerous because, as he said, you don't bring enough people with you , and two, it's dangerous because you have a lot of people working for you . And their interpretation of that idea can be different. You know, you have to stay very clear on that side of the line so that someone eight levels down doesn't do something stupid. It's a big change, I would say, but he's always been great. Always. Actually, that's why it was so tragic that we didn't invest in Uber.

But yeah, and then, I think, when you get successful, everything gets easier. How was Prince? People say nothing comes easy, but when you've got everything, nothing seems too hard. That's where he got to. The only thing I would add, and again, I don't want to lecture you, because a lot of people here already know this, is when it gets easy, that's when you push harder. I've always said, if something gets easy, it's soon going to be easy. It's going to get really hard. And you don't want that to happen.

You want to make it hard, not have it become hard for you, if you know what I mean . Yeah. Yeah. I've talked to a lot of entrepreneurs over the years, and they're like, 'Oh, man, we're just flying ahead.'" We're having a hard time right now." And I'm like, "Dude, you're going to get hit pretty hard , and you don't even know it." Now I know that too, because of course I've been through it myself . So. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a very valid point. Yeah, that's why it's Every time I talk to entrepreneurs, and they're like, "Oh yeah, it's easy, everything's going great, we have competition." You know, I just hired this guy.

He had an offer from Anthropic for $5 million , but he took my job for $400,000 a year. Blah blah blah, blah blah, blah blah. I'm like, "Dude, check to see if you're hurt, because I assure you, you're bleeding." You know, you're in trouble. Absolutely. But there are times when it's really easy. This is a person who's faking it. So I call it "fake it until you make it." When he lies yourself and others. But there are times when it's really easy because you stop pushing.

It's one thing when you're not winning , but you pretend you're winning. It's another thing when you're winning, but you've relaxed and you're about to start losing. Yeah. Lots of times like that. Yeah, sure. Last question, then we'll go to the audience. So, Ben, Travis, when you did your first external round at Uber, the venture round, I think the valuation was 4 million after investment or something. That's 4 million before investment . You're talking about the Uber round. Yeah. Our first round at Uber was 4 million before investment.

This one, you know, is orders of magnitude bigger. Ben, I think that's probably the biggest check you've ever written. Yeah. Definitely the biggest check I've ever written. When did you realize that we were 100% ready? What was your process? I was confident in 100%, when I first started talking to him. Once I found out what it was about, the only question for me was, is this going to be one ? Yes. Because I've known Travis for many, many years, and he's always been the opposite—our conversations have always been about the real state of affairs.

When I was on the board of Lyft, I was talking to him about Uber, and he was telling me what the Chinese ride-sharing companies were doing to him: hacking his apps, giving everything away for free, and so on. And he was really fired up about it. He was like, "If I can handle these guys, the rest of the world won't have a problem ." And there really aren't many of them, very few. I'm telling you, I've been in this business for a long time, very few entrepreneurs approach it that way .

So I knew if we could invest in Travis, and he was still ... the other thing I realized was that he remained Travis. It's like he, well, he kind of became... he didn't live on full. He didn't. Um, so yeah, it was very... I came to this conclusion very quickly. I think, um, a lot of people don't know, some people do, but not everyone, that we actually had separate companies. And so when I went to raise money, I showed up at A16 as this guy in a raincoat, with a bunch of watches, saying, "Do you want a watch?" What watch would you like?

I have a lot. Want something from the food industry? Actually, I have different parts of the food business. What do you like? I have something related to mining. This is pretty cool." And they're like, "We just want everything." And we heard that from the first few people we talked to. And so, actually, the difficult part of this deal, or what added to the complexity of this deal, what made us sweat a little bit and made it difficult, was that I had to combine the separate structures with the different investors into one.

Um, which was pretty interesting, because how do you determine the stake when certain things are still in the very early stages? Um, but it's great because it's like with Elon , he starts to put the pieces together. He's not just phenomenal, of course, in all five, six or eight things , and of course A16 is involved in most or all of them. Um. But he's run five, six or seven different companies, so I really tried to put that together under one roof. Which is just amazing.

He's doing this after a lot, you know, a couple of decades, but I mean, in some ways it makes things better, yeah. Before we get to the Q& A, one last thing, Travis, tell me a little bit about what it's like to -- to put a big part of the Uber team back together. Um, it's, you know, putting the pieces together. You know, Anthony, whose company you bought, there 's a lot of people in this room who were there with you in the first round. Listen, when I first started, I was on the board of Uber.

So I got thousands of requests from real Uber employees saying, "Come with us." And I had to be careful, because if you're on the board of a company, you can't hire thousands of their people. It's not just bad, it's actually illegal. So there's that. And, um, I'm very familiar with the laws in this area. Okay. Um, so you pick your people, you pick your moments, you get the idea. But, you know, there are a few -- there are a lot of really special people in this room.

I mean, Gautam, who was the CFO at Uber, joined Atoms. This is a recent development. Ganesh, who was the VP or SVP of Engineering at Uber, just joined Atoms. And there's a lot of young talent from Uber who joined and are now real pros. Right? There's a guy named Brian Atwell, who's one of our engineering leaders in food and infrastructure. Anthony Lewandowski, of course. Eric Mayhofer , who ran the advanced technology group at Uber, is now leading the food robotics division. You guys, the list goes on.

Oh , Jessica, Jessica Morton, she was leading Uber Eats in Japan. When we first started, I went to Japan and met with Masayoshi because I thought maybe he would want to invest, but I couldn't accept that he was just stealing my ideas and then investing in eight other companies that were doing same as me. And then I met with Jeff, because that was my number one priority—well, number one or number two there. But it's doing a lot of really cool things now. We're not just " Uber" anymore.

We have more non-Uber executives than Uber executives, but we have a lot of soul from that time and from those people. And it's like... well, what do they say? Start over? But there's also " moving forward," which is doing things in a new way, differently. Not being who you were before. Um, well, anyway, we're having fun. Speaking of special people in this room, I want to open up a question and answer session. Gary. Travis, my congratulations. My favorite question for this audience is: if you could send a message in a bottle to your 18-22- year-old self, what would you say?

Um. Listen, at 18, I was a real geek who pretended it wasn't yeah. So I would just say, "Dude, just be a geek." "Everything's going to be okay." You know, pretending you're not a geek when you are—it's just a cognitive drain, you know, a load that's not needed. Um , you know, I'm not sure it would have worked out any better, but that's exactly what I would probably tell myself, yeah. Yeah. What about you, Ben? That's a good question, I would just advise you not to worry, you know, everything is the way it is.

Do what you have to do. Um. You know, don't wait, the consequences will be what they have to be. You know, you have to find a way out. And you have to just keep looking until you find one. And there's nothing else you can do . So worrying doesn't help at all. No stress. Yeah. Do n't worry, be happy. Yeah. Yeah, don't worry, be... well, but there 's urgency. Don't be too happy. Yeah. Yeah, don't be too happy. Yeah, don't worry, be happy—Travis' plan. Don't don't be too happy.

Don't relax too much. Yeah. Okay . Next question. Owen. Question for Travis. How are you going to structure all of this? How are you going to have shared resources across different divisions? Are you going to have separate CEOs? Are you going to have mini- boards of directors? How do you see it all? Yeah, that's a great question. Um, one of the things that I'm glad about is that I don't have multiple boards of directors, because that was something that I was like, "Oh my God, I definitely don't want that." Um, but shared resources are, you know, a kind of management architecture, an organizational gimmick that we need to figure out.

Um, okay, as usual, the administrative costs: finance, legal, HR are shared. Then, okay, the infrastructure on the technology side is shared. Is the manufacturing shared ? Sometimes you want the manufacturing to be specialized. Okay, we're going to do that type of manufacturing, but it turns out that a lot of the processes in mining are similar to transportation, but they're very different from what we do in the food industry. So, do you have a manufacturing guru? I guess you do. Because it's a thing, it's a specialized thing, and when you do it at scale, you can attract much better talent, and just everything else works better.

So, I guess manufacturing is one of those things, and then you think about what parts of the software are mostly fixed , but not completely. And I do n't have all the answers to that . But these are business units that operate as separate entities. For example, the person who runs the mining is completely immersed in it, has a lot of control and authority to make the mining successful. Um, and the same for other situations, yeah. Yeah, that's very interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I mean, is that right, isn't it?

It's like I had to make it a little bit painful. Otherwise I just, I'm like, I'll , I said before "inevitable," I just do it. Yeah. Yeah. Next question . Brent. Hi, Travis. Um, one thing you said earlier is that anger makes you a really good entrepreneur. Um, you know, it's interesting. Sometimes people say that if you're successful and you're driven by revenge, it's like dirty fuel. It works, but it's not the best fuel source you can have. I'm wondering, over the course of your career and everything you've built, have you found a cleaner fuel source, or what you think about it?

Look, most people don't know this , but before that, a few companies before Uber , I built a peer-to-peer file sharing system, and I got sued for a quarter of a trillion dollars by 33 of the largest media companies in the world, and I was pissed. I built a business on revenge, which is a peer-to-peer CDN, like Akamai , BitTorrent meets Akamai before BitTorrent. And my whole goal was to turn those guys who sued me, the clients. It was a business of pure anger, like a pure anger store, okay?

Um, but I think in a lot of ways it's dirty, it's dirty revenge, or it's dirty, it can be successful , but it ends up being less than it should be, when it's going in the wrong place, if you know what I mean. Part of what drove me before was a little bit like a fear of failure. A fear of failure. And that can mean long nights where you don't get much done. And it just means you have this peculiarity, a weird vibe that makes people think, man, there's something wrong with this guy .

Right? And then it's just something that you're not going to see through . Right? When the Uber thing happened, I moved on to new things, it was about 8 months after I left Uber, I was already working on a new project. Uh, yeah, I guess I fell in love again, you know? And so people were like, "Are you mad about Uber?" Do you worry about it, does it gnaw at you, or, you know, do you think about it all the time? "And I'm like, ' Yeah, it's like when you fall in love again, you don't think about your ex so much anymore.' And if you come out of that state, you can create in a beautiful, pure way, if you know what I mean .

Yeah. That's important, and it's not something that... It takes work to get to that state, probably over time, but when I got there, I was already there. Yeah. Maybe one last question. Oh, and by the way, you can't act crazy to get to that state. Okay? As for our guy Mark, I have to say I have a conflict here. Okay. Yeah, question. You mentioned, I remember that slide. I'll remember it forever." "Final boss." Hmm, was there a final boss for Adams, especially in this... What's a "final boss"?

What does it mean? Final boss, sorry. Final boss. Yeah. Oh. Final boss." The final boss is my version of the final boss. Listen, um... there's a lot of potential here . Maybe the final bosses are... I don't know who the final boss is, but I'm just going to fantasize a little bit about it : there are a lot of people in this room and outside of this room who would love to beat me. I don't mean anything bad, but we're competing for the next industrial revolution.

Um, you know, Magic Johnson is old school. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were kind of friends, but they could kick each other, right? So, um, that's a bad analogy for this company, but you get the idea. It's like Patrick Ewing, you know what I mean. Okay. But, um, I think it's actually pretty important. Is there some kind of "ultra"... that you always have to think about when you go into a space like this: Who's the best of the best in industrial AI? Anyone want to guess?

It's pretty obvious. His name rhymes with "Shmilon." Got it? He's the best of the best. And he's just going to keep going and keep doing more and more , even if what you're doing is different from what he's doing. It forces you into final boss mode. I mean, I don't even know who his final boss is. Like, man, Elon is the GOAT . And I'm like, man, I'm just a little kid. That's great. Um, you know, maybe he's the final boss. But of course, I have a lot of respect for him .

He's obviously the best by a huge margin. Um, and so, um, in short , I'm not sure exactly how to answer that . It was kind of an off- the-cuff kind of thing. Yeah. Maybe we'll end with this question: you never left, but you sat in a cave for a while, you know, you were completely immersed. You were focused. I had a presentation that I showed my leadership team sometime in 2019. It was called “Be on iconic.” We had a really big, detailed guide on how to not draw attention to anything we did.

We had thousands of employees who weren’t allowed to list our company on LinkedIn. It was weird. Because it’s your coming out, so to speak, you’re back in the flow. Tell me how you think Silicon Valley or the tech industry as a whole has changed since you were in the thick of it , and now you’re back 8 years later. What surprised you or what’s most noticeable? Look, I think one of the coolest things—and this is part of why I came out and not like I used to— is that the media landscape has completely changed.

Ten years ago, 90 percent of what was said in the media landscape was very negative. Business had become politics, and we did n’t even notice. So, Think of your favorite politician, if you have one. I mean, a lot of you may not have one, but let's just imagine that you do, okay? That's [ __ ] ridiculous. But let's say, okay? Take your politician. Type his name into Google. Do you think you'll find anything good there? It's just going to be a tsunami of negativity -- that's what you're going to find.

Of course, " if there's bloodshed, it's in the news," right ? It's human nature: negativity gets clicks and all that. But ... We weren't used to it back then, and we thought that whatever the New York Times wrote was true. And now we know that's not even close , and we understand that. And so the media landscape has become like, yeah, you don't have to talk to those guys. You can go and talk to David Senra. You can go and talk to Joe Rogan, or whoever, and you can say what you want, in an environment that doesn't feel like a self-criticism session in Maoist China, right?

So this is a huge change, and I think Elon buying Twitter is the beginning of us being able to express ourselves, and dissent is no longer illegal. It's a big deal. We should all thank Elon for that. And it allows, so you Okay, someone like me who basically just said, "Okay, I want to build." I want to not think about what the New York Times is saying when I'm making decisions about what to build. I had to simulate the life of a capitalist in Russia, whose main performance metric was, " Shut up." And that's what I did for 8 years.

In a weird way, that's exactly how it was . For different reasons, but that's exactly how it was. So now we're coming out of that mode, or getting out, and we're going. And I think that's the biggest change for all of us in the last 8 years. God bless you, and I hope it continues. I think I should end on a great note. Travis is back. Travis wasn't going anywhere. Give Travis a pat on the back. Thank you. Whoa!

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