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All-In · 3 min · Mar 17, 2026

Atoms is focused on specialized robots for industrial work

Travis Kalanick · CEO, Atoms

Travis Kalanick says Atoms focuses on specialized machines for productive work rather than humanoid generalists.

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 3:10Physical businesses can be built like an atoms-based computer3 min
  2. 44:16AI returns require redesigning company processesPro pick 5 min
  3. 1:03:55Michael Dell committed $6.25 billion to children’s accounts5 min
  4. 28:54Capital matters when it can change the competitive odds3 min
  5. 52:28Inference is moving closer to data as cloud costs rise5 min
  6. 7:30Automation can make remote mining sites viable3 min
  7. 10:53Waymo leads, but scaling remains a major challenge3 min
  8. 26:24Atoms is focused on specialized robots for industrial work3 min
Up next · Lex Fridman PodcastWhy Titan failed: hiring ahead of a visionPro pick 6:57
“And we're sort of down specialized robot lane, which is gainfully employed robots.”
Travis Kalanickat 28:13 · All-In
28:13

Takeaways

  1. He favors specialized robots over humanoid generalists.
  2. Atoms' food and mining work centers on specific tasks.
  3. He sees room to invest in materials and manipulation.

About this segment

Travis Kalanick says Atoms focuses on specialized machines for productive work rather than humanoid generalists. He sees materials science as an area for investment as physical AI hardware catches up.

Travis Kalanick

CEO, Atoms

Built Uber and now leads Atoms, applying industrial AI and specialized robotics to automate food, mining and transport.

  • Chamath Palihapitiya, Host · Founder & CEO, Social Capital

    Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq.

  • Jason Calacanis, Host · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH

    Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.

  • David Sacks, Host · Co-founder & partner, Craft Ventures

    PayPal's first COO, founded Yammer; White House AI & crypto czar 2025–26.

  • David Friedberg, Host · CEO, Ohalo

    Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.

From “Two Legendary Founders: Travis Kalanick & Michael Dell Live from Austin, Texas”, Mar 17, 2026. Watch the full episode

Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

  1. 26:31

    and where we add in evolving things like actuators and the materials and everything else that's going to make physical ai work and scale look a lot with the questions you're asking are going down humanoid lane which is like this thing and and everybody talks about how do you do the hand it's almost like terminator 2 type obsession with the hand which is fair like it's a very critical part of it i mean look at the i like to look at the achilles the quote-unquote achilles tendon of any of these machines and you're like that's where the action is this this is a couple other places um look i'm in the non-humanoid space i mean but mechanical engineers have been dealing with actuators and you know all the sort of electromechanical sort of interactions that make machines do certain things but like i'm in the food machine space so i can tell you how to

  2. 27:27

    open a paper bag and put a put a bowl in a paper bag without tearing the paper bag but i am less into the i forget the name perio they're they're the the senses to understand awareness and touch um i'm not in that game um so when you're mining you're like you're not like you know you know you're not threatening you're not playing tennis um certain things may be equivalent to tennis. So look, The bottom line is we're seeing, obviously, all you have to do is go online and look at where the humanoids are going over time and how much better they're getting. It's wild. And it's happening so freaking fast. But any humanoid demo starts with dancing and martial arts.

  3. 28:20

    Yeah. And we're sort of down specialized robot lane, which is gainfully employed robots. So I know I didn't totally answer the question on like the technology piece, but... I just like, do you agree that there's probably like a big opportunity for venture money and like research to go into material science? Yes, for sure. Because if the physical AI stack manipulation and all of the related things around it is massive.

  4. 28:50

    And so if you get the software working, it's almost like the hardware has to catch up. Yes. We got a lot of investment to be made. There's a lot. idea well actually it's good that you bring this up you know one of the things you pioneered