Uber's Ex-CEO Wants Robots With Wheels, Not Legs, To Save Humanity
KEY POINTS
- ā¢Travis Kalanick announced on Friday that his robotics company Atoms has been in stealth mode for eight years.
- ā¢He envisions automated physical machines creating abundance across industries such as food service, mining, and transportation.
- ā¢Kalanick cautioned against humanoid designs, favoring wheeled robots after seeing a 2025 Beijing humanoid robot half-marathon.
In a 1,600-word manifesto delivered Friday, Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick unveiled Atoms, his eight-year-old secret robotics startup aiming to build 'gainfully employed robots' for food service, mining, and transportation. Kalanick proclaims a 'Golden Age' fueled by autonomous machines making other machines ā basically robots turning into assembly line workaholics so humans can chill. Notably, Kalanick scoffed at humanoid robots running half-marathons in Beijing last year, suggesting wheels beat legs for endurance, a hot take sure to ruffle bipedal AI egos everywhere. Meanwhile, AI luminary Fei-Fei Li agrees: underwater bots should look like fish, because nothing says tech progress like a robotic fishy revolution.
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(1 of 3)Travis Kalanickās bright idea: swap sweaty humanoid running robots for chill wheeled deliver-botsābecause evolution was clearly overrated in Beijing last year.
After Uberās toxic workforce, Kalanickās new robots will hopefully have better HR algorithms than his last company.
Watching robots in a half-marathon was almost inspiring until Kalanick suggested wheelsābecause if robots run, we might actually lose to them.
Source: Businessinsider | Published: 3/14/2026 | Author: Lakshmi Varanasi
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