The last time the global Uber consumers heard about Travis Kalanick? Well, he’s now a Saudi Arabia citizen.
This only goes to show that even if you can de-burden yourself with lots and lots of stresses when you decide to let go of your responsibilities in a company, you’d be left with a pocket gaping, similar to what’s happening with this former Uber co-founder and its former CEO.
It seems that getting a Saudi Arabian citizenship isn’t enough to regain his losses since he decided to leave his job on Uber, so he now is launching a robotics and food tech brand in the name, Atoms.
He’s back in the limelight with this newest brand.
“I’ve been in hiding,” Kalanick told Ridesharing Forum in an interview, among the first since unveiling Atoms. “Up until today, I was running a company called City Storage Systems — a conglomerate operating in 30 countries that asked, ‘Can you get a meal delivered to you so efficiently that is starts to approach the cost of going to the grocery store?’ Because if you do, you do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car.”
So, that says it all. Know that Atoms will be serving as a catch-all parent company under which the other brands of Kalanick exist, which include the controversial CloudKitchens, operating system Otter, office lunch delivery brand Picnic, and automated bowl-building technology Lab37, alongside fresh undertakings.
For context, City Storage Systems was “the stealth name” for Atoms, which has been in process since 2018, like a film’s working title.
While the former Uber CEO pointed out that the mission of the rebranded company is “infrastructure for better food,” Atoms will also doodle around other industries, such as mining and transportation, which will be able to provide support for the transformation of the autonomous food delivery and real estate over time. Take, for instance, the brand under the Atoms brand, which claims “as a leading developer in food production industrial real estate with a focus on enhancing supply chain logistics.”
Ridesharing media are abuzz with Atoms lately. Officially, it is a robotics and automation company rebranded from City Storage Systems, focusing on "gainfully employed,” task-specific robots for physical-world applications, including food logistics, industrial mining, and transportation, rather than humanoid designs. It is integrated with CloudKitchens.
That being said, it doesn’t move forward without controversies. Over the years, his brands have been the subjects of multiple lawsuits, encompassing:
- Labor disputes
- Sexual harassment allegations
- Deceptive business practices
- Discrimination
- Hostile work environment, and so much more
In addition, his office lunch brand, Picnic, was sued last year by Mixt, a famous salad chain, for allegedly selling the latter’s food products without consent.
But, despite these hurdles, Kalanick expressed his confidence, witnessed by the media, that everything will be alright with his Atoms brand, specifying that it can handle tasks, such as crafting 1,000 pancakes in an hour. Can you pass that maple syrup, please? Sign up for that account today on Ridesharing Forum to participate in the talks.