Travis Kalanick's robotics startup taps Meta veteran for top AI role

Sep 15, 2026 07:44 AM - 13 hours ago 4

Travis Kalanick's caller robotics startup, Atoms, has scooped up a high-profile hire.

Vikas Chandra, a longtime Meta AI executive who led AI activity for the company's smart glasses, announced Monday that he is joining the startup arsenic vice president of AI.

At Atoms, Chandra said he will build "foundation models for the beingness world" — AI systems designed to thief machines understand and enactment successful real-world environments.

"For 8 years my occupation was making models mini capable and accelerated capable to unrecorded connected AI glasses," Chandra wrote connected X. "The beingness world is simply a harder type of the aforesaid problem."

Atoms and Chandra did not respond to requests for comment.

Atoms, which has revealed fewer specifications astir its work, says it is building robots for industries including food, mining, and transportation. Kalanick, who co-founded Uber successful 2009 but resigned nether investor unit successful 2017, publically unveiled Atoms earlier this twelvemonth aft years of operating successful stealth. Atoms absorbed Kalanick's ghost-kitchen venture, CloudKitchens, arsenic a subsidiary.

The institution raised $1.7 cardinal earlier this summertime successful a information led by Andreessen Horowitz to prosecute what Kalanick called "a travel to digitize the beingness world."

"On galore levels, this information is simply a spot of unfinished business," Kalanick wrote connected X during the announcement. "Fuel to complete the bits-to-atoms communicative arc we started astatine Uber, continued astatine CloudKitchens, and will now decorativeness astatine Atoms."

Chandra's presence is the latest successful a drawstring of salient hires astatine Atoms.

Last month, erstwhile Uber finance main Gautam Gupta joined the startup arsenic main financial officer. Earlier this year, Atoms acquired autonomous-mining startup Pronto, which is tally by erstwhile Uber self-driving technologist Anthony Levandowski. Several erstwhile Uber labor besides activity astatine Atoms, according to LinkedIn.

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Rya is simply a elder newsman astatine Business Insider covering beingness AI and robotics. She writes astir mill automation, humanoid robots, and the title to cod the real-world information needed to bring AI into the beingness world. She antecedently worked astatine The San Francisco Standard, wherever she reported connected tech civilization and autonomous vehicles. She has a bachelor’s grade successful history and authorities from Pomona College and a master’s successful history from the University of Cambridge. Rya lives successful San Francisco. Contact her astatine [email protected] aliases connected Signal astatine rjetha.07. Use a individual email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device. Here's our guideline to sharing accusation securely.