Former Uber Finance Chief Joins Travis Kalanick's Robotics Startup Atoms

Kalanick's Crew Reunites at Atoms

Gautam Gupta, the former finance chief under Travis Kalanick at Uber, 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. His departure was part of a larger exodus of top talent from the company following a series of scandals and complaints of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination.

Atoms, previously known as CloudKitchens, has been actively recruiting former Uber employees. The startup has already acquired mining autonomy startup Pronto, which is run by former Uber (and former Google) self-driving engineer Anthony Levandowski.

‘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.

Uber even joined the round as an investor, reuniting the company with the founder it pushed out in 2017. The exact amount Uber contributed remains undisclosed, but The Information reported $100 million, a figure that TechCrunch has been able to confirm.

Gupta had a long history with Uber, investing in the company in 2012 when he was a vice president at Goldman Sachs, and then joining the company in 2013. He has since co-founded his own venture capital firm, A*, which invested in Atoms in what was the largest investment in the history of their fund.

Gupta's move to Atoms marks the latest development in Kalanick's effort to rebuild his team from Uber. He has said that he wants Atoms to work on mining, food, and transportation, though his posts to date have been less about specifics and more about wanting to ‘go up against the final boss, Nature and its fierce resistance to change.’

When asked about his decision to join Atoms, Gupta wrote on social media that he was drawn by Kalanick's ‘magical mix of genius and intensity that made me want to bet on the person, not the market.’

‘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,’ Gupta wrote.

Gupta is stepping down from A* to take on the CFO role at Atoms, according to his LinkedIn profile.

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Sean O’Kane, Sr. Reporter, Transportation

Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk.