Travis Kalanick’s robotics startup Atoms taps former Uber finance chief as CFO

特拉维斯·卡兰尼克（Travis Kalanick）的机器人初创公司 Atoms 聘请前 Uber 财务主管担任 CFO

Another former Uber executive is joining Travis Kalanick’s robotics and industrial AI startup Atoms, just a few weeks after it raised $1.7 billion. 在特拉维斯·卡兰尼克（Travis Kalanick）的机器人与工业人工智能初创公司 Atoms 完成 17 亿美元融资仅几周后，又有一位前 Uber 高管加入了该公司。

Gautam Gupta, the former finance chief under Kalanick, said in social media posts on Wednesday that he has joined Atoms as chief financial officer. Gupta spent more than four years at Uber until he left in July 2017, just a few weeks after Kalanick resigned as CEO. (Gupta had announced his intention to leave that May.) 曾在卡兰尼克麾下担任财务主管的高塔姆·古普塔（Gautam Gupta）周三在社交媒体上发文称，他已加入 Atoms 并担任首席财务官。古普塔在 Uber 工作了四年多，于 2017 年 7 月离职，当时距离卡兰尼克辞去首席执行官一职仅过去几周。（古普塔此前已于同年 5 月宣布了离职意向。）

Hiring Gupta continues a trend of Kalanick getting the Uber band back together at Atoms. Earlier this year, Atoms acquired mining autonomy startup Pronto, which is run by former Uber (and former Google) self-driving engineer Anthony Levandowski. According to LinkedIn, a number of former top Uber employees who worked with Kalanick also work at Atoms, which was previously called CloudKitchens. 聘请古普塔延续了卡兰尼克在 Atoms 重聚“Uber 旧部”的趋势。今年早些时候，Atoms 收购了矿业自动化初创公司 Pronto，该公司由前 Uber（及前谷歌）自动驾驶工程师安东尼·莱万多夫斯基（Anthony Levandowski）运营。据领英（LinkedIn）显示，许多曾与卡兰尼克共事的前 Uber 高层员工目前也在 Atoms 工作，该公司此前名为 CloudKitchens。

“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 when he announced the $1.7 billion funding round last month. “从很多层面来看，这一轮融资算是未竟事业的一部分。这是为了完成我们在 Uber 开始、在 CloudKitchens 延续，并最终将在 Atoms 完成的‘比特到原子’（bits-to-atoms）故事弧线，”卡兰尼克在上个月宣布 17 亿美元融资轮时写道。

Uber even joined the round as an investor, reuniting the company with the founder it pushed out in 2017 after a series of scandals and complaints of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination. Uber hasn’t disclosed how much it contributed. The Information reported $100 million, a figure that TechCrunch has also been able to confirm. Uber 甚至作为投资者参与了本轮融资，这使得该公司与其创始人重新走到了一起——尽管 Uber 曾在 2017 年因一系列丑闻以及关于普遍性骚扰和歧视的投诉而将他排挤出局。Uber 并未披露其投资金额。据《The Information》报道，投资额为 1 亿美元，这一数字也得到了 TechCrunch 的证实。

Kalanick has said he wants Atoms to work on mining, food, and transportation, though his posts to date about the startup have been less about specifics and more about wanting to “go up against the final boss, Nature and its fierce resistance to change.” 卡兰尼克曾表示，他希望 Atoms 涉足采矿、食品和交通领域，尽管他迄今为止关于这家初创公司的发文很少涉及具体细节，更多是表达想要“挑战终极 Boss——大自然及其对变革的激烈抵制”。

Gupta invested in Uber in 2012 when he was a vice president at Goldman Sachs, and then joined the company in 2013. “[T]he single biggest reason I joined was – Travis. I believed he possessed a magical mix of genius and intensity that made me want to bet on the person, not the market,” Gupta wrote Wednesday. 古普塔在 2012 年担任高盛副总裁时曾投资过 Uber，随后于 2013 年加入该公司。“我加入的最主要原因就是——特拉维斯。我相信他拥有天才与强度的神奇结合，这让我想要押注于这个人，而不是市场，”古普塔周三写道。

“First one in, last one out, every day. Breaking down walls of regulations, unions, city bureaucracies, etc. Had he not pioneered ridesharing, I don’t think anyone else had the fortitude to fight through one adversity after another to create a whole new market worth hundreds of billions out of nothing.” “每天第一个到，最后一个走。打破监管、工会、城市官僚机构等设置的壁垒。如果不是他开创了网约车服务，我不认为还有谁有那种毅力去克服一个又一个逆境，从无到有创造出一个价值数千亿美元的全新市场。”

Gupta wrote Wednesday that A*, the VC firm he co-founded in 2020 after three years at Opendoor, invested in Atoms in what was the “largest investment in the history of our fund.” Gupta is stepping down from A* to take on the CFO role at Atoms, according to his LinkedIn profile. 古普塔周三写道，他在 Opendoor 工作三年后于 2020 年联合创立的风险投资公司 A* 对 Atoms 进行了投资，这是“我们基金历史上最大的一笔投资”。根据他的领英资料，古普塔将卸任 A* 的职务，转而担任 Atoms 的首席财务官。