Travis Kalanick’s robotics company raises $1.7B, led by a16z
Travis Kalanick’s robotics company raises $1.7B, led by a16z
特拉维斯·卡兰尼克（Travis Kalanick）的机器人公司融资 17 亿美元，由 a16z 领投
Travis Kalanick’s robotics company, Atoms, has raised $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. Ben Horowitz will join the company’s board following the investment. Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, and others participated in the round. Perhaps most notably, Uber also joined the funding round, re-connecting Kalanick with the company he founded — and the same company that pushed him out as CEO in 2017 following complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination, and a toxic workplace.
特拉维斯·卡兰尼克（Travis Kalanick）的机器人公司 Atoms 在一轮融资中筹集了 17 亿美元，由 Andreessen Horowitz（a16z）领投。投资完成后，本·霍洛维茨（Ben Horowitz）将加入该公司董事会。贝恩资本（Bain Capital）、Fifth Wall 等机构也参与了本轮融资。最引人注目的是，Uber 也参与了此次融资，这让卡兰尼克与他一手创立的公司重新建立了联系——而正是这家公司，在 2017 年因性骚扰、歧视和有毒职场文化的投诉，将他赶下了首席执行官的职位。
Atoms is essentially a rebranded holding company created atop the project Kalanick has been working on since he resigned from Uber, a ghost kitchen play called Cloud Kitchens. When he revealed the new name in March, Kalanick announced he had acquired Pronto, the heavy industry automation company run by his former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski. Kalanick has also said he wants to get into mining with Atoms, going beyond what Pronto already does for vehicles in that industry. Last year, it was reported that Kalanick was interested in buying the U.S. arm of Chinese self-driving vehicle company Pony AI with backing from Uber. The Information reported in March that those talks had ended.
Atoms 本质上是一家重组后的控股公司，建立在卡兰尼克自离开 Uber 后一直从事的项目——名为 Cloud Kitchens 的共享厨房业务之上。今年 3 月，卡兰尼克在公布新名称时宣布，他已收购了由其前 Uber 同事安东尼·莱万多夫斯基（Anthony Levandowski）经营的重工业自动化公司 Pronto。卡兰尼克还表示，他希望通过 Atoms 进入采矿业，业务范围将超越 Pronto 目前在该行业为车辆提供的服务。去年有报道称，在 Uber 的支持下，卡兰尼克曾有意收购中国自动驾驶公司小马智行（Pony AI）的美国业务。据《The Information》3 月报道，相关谈判已经终止。
In a post on X about the fundraise, Kalanick didn’t go into specifics about what he wants to build with Atoms. “On many levels, this round is a bit of unfinished business. Fuel to complete the bits-to-atoms story arc we started at Uber, continued at CloudKitchens and will now finish at Atoms,” Kalanick wrote. “16 years ago, I started a journey to digitize the physical world. Understand, predict and control the physical world with software. Building ‘atoms-based’ computers where CPU is manufacturing, storage is real estate, and network is transportation.”
在 X 上发布关于此次融资的消息时，卡兰尼克并未详细说明他想用 Atoms 构建什么。“在很多层面上，这一轮融资算是未竟事业的一部分。这是完成我们从 Uber 开始、在 CloudKitchens 继续，并最终在 Atoms 完成的‘比特到原子’（bits-to-atoms）故事弧线的燃料，”卡兰尼克写道。“16 年前，我开启了一段数字化物理世界的旅程。通过软件去理解、预测和控制物理世界。构建‘基于原子’的计算机，其中 CPU 是制造业，存储是房地产，网络是交通运输。”
Kalanick has said he wants to build a “wheelbase for robots” with Atoms. “Travis Is Back,” declared a simultaneous post from Ben Horowitz on Wednesday. “It takes a rare kind of entrepreneur to change these old-school, heavy parts of our economy. They need a gritty work ethic, drive, and range that spans across domains, from software architecture to mechanical engineering. Travis is that guy,” said Horowitz.
卡兰尼克曾表示，他想用 Atoms 构建一个“机器人轴距”（wheelbase for robots）。周三，本·霍洛维茨同步发文称：“特拉维斯回来了。”霍洛维茨表示：“需要一种罕见的企业家才能改变我们经济中那些老派、沉重的领域。他们需要坚韧的职业道德、动力，以及跨越从软件架构到机械工程等多个领域的广度。特拉维斯就是这样的人。”
Horowitz wrote that Atoms will be all about making people more productive in the physical world. “I think the most valuable thing someone could do with AI and robotics is to repeat the same thing Uber did for transportation, or that computers did for the digital world: to make everything and everyone more productive,” his post reads.
霍洛维茨写道，Atoms 的核心目标是提高人们在物理世界中的生产力。“我认为，利用人工智能和机器人技术所能做的最有价值的事情，就是重复 Uber 在交通领域所做的事情，或者计算机在数字世界所做的事情：让一切和每个人都变得更有效率，”他的帖子写道。
Kalanick didn’t go into specifics, but it sounds like a good chunk of funding will go toward hiring. “Changemakers, the builders of tomorrow’s progress machines, will inevitably go up against the final boss, Nature and its fierce 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.
卡兰尼克没有透露具体细节，但听起来很大一部分资金将用于招聘。“变革者，即明日进步机器的建造者，将不可避免地面对最终的 Boss——大自然及其对变革的激烈抵抗。在这个新的工业时代，大自然将向建造者抛出它所拥有的一切，而这需要人类最强者坚持到底，让这些复杂的系统和行业跨越终点线，”他写道。