Atoms hires Gautam Gupta as CFO after $1.7B funding round
Gupta is leaving venture firm A* to oversee finances across Travis Kalanick's food, mining and transportation automation businesses.
By Ryan Merket · Published
Why it matters
Gupta takes financial oversight of a $1.7 billion-funded industrial automation company spanning food production, mining and transportation. Pronto's commercial deployments give him an operating base as Atoms builds across businesses with different products, customers and capital needs.
Atoms, the robotics and industrial AI company founded by Travis Kalanick, hired Gautam Gupta as chief financial officer after raising $1.7 billion in a July 22 financing led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Gupta announced the move on August 5, according to a TechCrunch report. He is stepping down from A*, the venture firm he co-founded in 2020, to join Atoms.
The appointment reunites two executives whose work together predates Uber's most turbulent period. Gupta invested in Uber in 2012 while working as a vice president at Goldman Sachs, then joined Uber in 2013 and became its highest-ranking finance executive. He left in July 2017, weeks after Kalanick resigned as CEO.
TechCrunch reported in 2017, citing Axios, that Gupta was set to join Opendoor as its first chief operating officer. He studied computer engineering at Nanyang Technological University and earned an MBA from MIT Sloan, according to an investor biography. His resume covers engineering, investment banking, growth-stage finance, company operations and venture investing.
The company says its work spans food production, mining and transportation, with Pronto providing its clearest public example of commercial autonomy deployment.
Financing three operating areas
Gupta arrives after Atoms completed a $1.7 billion funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz on July 22. Ben Horowitz joined the Atoms board. Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Chemistry, A*, K5 Global, Abstract, SV Angel, Alpha Square Group and Uber also participated.
A* made the largest investment in the fund's history, Gupta said. Uber invested approximately $100 million, TechCrunch reported, although Uber has not publicly specified its contribution.
The financing gives Atoms substantial capital as it expands across those operating areas. Gupta takes financial oversight of a company combining CloudKitchens-related food operations with Pronto's off-road autonomy technology and Kalanick's plans for transportation robotics.
Food grew out of CloudKitchens and related businesses. Mining is anchored by Pronto, Anthony Levandowski's autonomous-haulage developer. Levandowski leads Atoms Mining and Transport following the acquisition, according to Pronto's announcement. Kalanick has described the transport work in terms of creating a common "wheelbase for robots".
Pronto has released deployment figures for mining, while Atoms has provided few details about commercial food-production robots or the products planned for transportation. Gupta will have to set budgets and financial controls across businesses with different products, customers and operating models.
Kalanick rebuilds around physical automation
Kalanick introduced the Atoms name and expanded mission on March 13, bringing City Storage Systems and CloudKitchens into a broader effort to control physical operations with software and specialized machines. Andreessen Horowitz wrote that Kalanick had worked on Atoms for eight years before its public unveiling. Kalanick has described the company as the conclusion of a "bits-to-atoms" arc that began with Uber and continued through CloudKitchens.
The project extends a pattern across Kalanick's career. He left UCLA in 1998 to work on Scour, a peer-to-peer media service that entered bankruptcy protection after copyright litigation. He later co-founded Red Swoosh, a content-delivery business acquired by Akamai in 2007, before co-founding Uber with Garrett Camp. Each venture coordinated physical or digital infrastructure through software.
Atoms applies that approach to equipment, facilities and workers. Kalanick has said the company intends to build specialized industrial robots instead of general-purpose humanoids. Its machines are being designed around specific work in kitchens, mines and transportation networks.
Mining supplies the clearest evidence of that strategy. Atoms acquired Pronto earlier in 2026, placing Levandowski in charge of Atoms Mining and Transport. Pronto retrofits existing mining and construction vehicles with autonomous systems, allowing operators to automate mixed fleets without replacing every truck. TechCrunch reported that Pronto had about 30 employees in August 2024, before the Atoms acquisition, and that its technology used cameras, GPS and onboard computing for off-road autonomy.
Pronto says its agreement with Heidelberg Materials covers more than 100 trucks across more than a dozen operations. In a January 2026 announcement, Pronto said its system had autonomously hauled over two million tons of limestone in under eight months at Heidelberg Materials' Lake Bridgeport quarry in Texas. Those figures measure Pronto deployments rather than Atoms as a whole, but they establish that one part of the group has operated autonomous equipment at commercial sites.
A field split between retrofits and new robots
Pronto's retrofit model places it alongside Built Robotics, which develops autonomous systems for construction equipment. Pronto says its mixed-fleet technology can work with trucks from manufacturers including Caterpillar and Komatsu, making those established equipment companies relevant to its deployment strategy. Pronto also acquired off-road autonomy rival SafeAI in July 2025, before Atoms bought Pronto.
Atoms' other operating areas face a different comparison set. RobCo develops modular industrial robots for manufacturing and announced a $100 million Series C in January 2026. The retrofit approach gives Pronto a specific commercial proposition: mines and quarries can add autonomy to equipment they already own, including mixed fleets from incumbent manufacturers.
Gupta's appointment adds a former Uber finance executive with subsequent operating and investing experience to that structure.
The reunion also carries history. Kalanick left Uber in 2017 after workplace scandals and complaints involving harassment and discrimination. Uber agreed to sell its Advanced Technologies Group to Aurora on December 7, 2020, and completed the sale on January 19, 2021. Nine years after Kalanick's departure, Uber has invested in Atoms, Levandowski leads two of its operating areas and Gupta has returned as CFO.
Kalanick has assembled $1.7 billion and executives with experience in finance, operations and autonomous vehicles around his thesis that purpose-built machines can improve physical industries. Gupta now has to establish financial discipline across three operating areas with distinct products and customers.