Travis Kalanick, the disgraced Uber co-founder forced out in 2017 amid toxic culture scandals, is making a dramatic return to self-driving technology—with Uber’s backing. After eight years operating CloudKitchens in stealth mode, Kalanick announced last week that he’s rebranding his company City Storage Systems as “Atoms,” a robotics company focused on food, mining, and transportation. The supreme irony: Uber shut down its self-driving division in 2020 after spending $2.5 billion, selling it to Aurora for $4 billion. Now Uber is funding Kalanick to resurrect the same bet they abandoned.
Uber Abandoned Self-Driving in 2020. Now They’re Funding It Again.
Uber spent $2.5-3 billion building its Advanced Technologies Group from 2015 to 2020, pouring resources into autonomous ride-hailing as the future of the company. The division was valued at $7.25 billion in mid-2019. Then reality hit: self-driving was too expensive, too slow to deliver, and didn’t fit Uber’s core business model. In December 2020, Uber sold ATG to Aurora for a $4 billion valuation, investing $400 million and retaining a 26% stake while admitting defeat on in-house autonomy.
However, six years later, Uber is funding Kalanick’s Atoms to attempt the exact same thing. The company hasn’t disclosed how much they’re investing, describing it only as “major backing.” Kalanick told Fortune on March 14 that he wants to “be more aggressive in rolling out self-driving technology than Waymo”—the same aggressive mentality that led to Uber’s original self-driving disaster. Either Uber learned nothing from their $2.5 billion failure, or they’re so desperate for an autonomous strategy that they’ll bet on the guy they fired for toxic culture.
Kalanick Was Fired for Toxic Culture. His Strategy Hasn’t Changed.
Kalanick didn’t leave Uber voluntarily. He was forced out on June 20, 2017, after a damning investigation by former Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed that Uber’s leadership enabled a toxic environment. The crisis started when engineer Susan Fowler published a blog post exposing systematic sexual harassment, triggering revelations about a South Korean escort bar trip by executives, an internal “sex memo,” and the mishandling of a rape victim’s medical records. Five of Uber’s biggest investors signed a letter demanding his resignation.
Moreover, the toxicity stemmed from Kalanick’s “move fast and break things” culture, where aggression and unethical behavior were tolerated, if not rewarded. Now, in 2026, Kalanick is using identical language. He wants to be “more aggressive” than Waymo. He says Waymo’s challenge is “manufacturing and scale and urgency and fierceness, not core technology.” It’s the same mentality that destroyed Uber’s culture and led to regulatory disasters. In self-driving, where one safety incident can end a company, aggressive culture isn’t just toxic—it’s dangerous.
Cruise Tried Aggressive Rollout. It Ended in Disaster.
Kalanick’s explicit goal is to beat Waymo through aggressive deployment. But Cruise already tried that strategy, and it killed the company. On October 2, 2023, a Cruise robotaxi dragged a San Francisco pedestrian 20 feet at 7 mph after hitting her. The company concealed critical details from regulators. Consequently, the California DMV suspended Cruise’s permits. The NHTSA fined them $1.5 million. CEO Kyle Vogt resigned. GM laid off 900 employees—24% of the workforce—and shut down the entire operation in December 2024.
Cruise’s aggressive expansion revealed fundamental problems. The cars needed human remote intervention every 2.5 to 5 miles—nowhere near production-ready. They had difficulty detecting children. Seventy-five incidents involved blocking first responders, driving through emergency tape, and running over fire hoses. Austin police documented 12 “near miss” events between July and November 2023. GM had invested over $10 billion into Cruise. All gone, because the company prioritized speed over safety.
This is Kalanick’s playbook. “Urgency and fierceness” sounds exactly like the aggressive rollout that destroyed Cruise. In safety-critical autonomous driving, caution isn’t slowness—it’s strategic wisdom.
Waymo’s ‘Boring’ Approach is Lapping the Field
While Kalanick promises aggression, Waymo is already winning with methodical deployment. The company is targeting 1 million rides per week by the end of 2026—four times its current volume of roughly 250,000 weekly rides. Waymo is operating fully autonomous (no safety drivers) in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Austin, Atlanta, and Miami. By the end of 2026, they’ll expand to Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Houston, Las Vegas, Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, San Diego, Washington DC, and London—their first international market.
Furthermore, Waymo is deploying its sixth-generation Ojai robotaxis with lower costs and better weather handling. They’re manufacturing 2,000-plus vehicles by the end of 2026 at their Magna facility in Arizona. Their safety record: zero major incidents despite years of operation. Regulatory trust is high—California and other states continue approving expansions while Cruise’s permits remain suspended.
Kalanick claims Waymo’s challenge is “manufacturing and scale and urgency and fierceness.” However, Waymo is already scaling. They’re manufacturing thousands of vehicles, operating in 16-plus cities, and targeting a million rides per week. The issue isn’t their urgency—it’s that cautious, methodical deployment is the correct strategy for technology where mistakes kill people. Atoms is starting from zero, years behind a leader that’s winning precisely because they’re not aggressive.
This Isn’t a Comeback. It’s Regression.
Uber’s funding of Kalanick isn’t strategic—it’s desperate nostalgia. Uber learned, painfully, that self-driving is hard, expensive, and doesn’t fit their business model. They spent $2.5 billion, admitted failure, and wisely pivoted to partnerships (Aurora for trucking, Waymo for robotaxis). Now they’re ignoring those lessons and betting on a disgraced founder whose toxic “move fast” culture is exactly wrong for safety-critical autonomous vehicles.
This isn’t like Steve Jobs returning to Apple. Jobs’ failure at NeXT was strategic, not cultural. Kalanick’s baggage is ethical—sexual harassment, toxic culture, aggressive expansion tactics that hurt employees and regulators. Second chances are fine for strategic missteps, but Kalanick hasn’t demonstrated he’s learned the cultural lessons. He’s using the same language (“aggressive,” “urgency,” “fierceness”) that led to Uber’s toxicity and Cruise’s regulatory destruction.
Consequently, Waymo’s caution is winning. Cruise’s aggression led to shutdown. Uber already failed at self-driving. Funding Kalanick to try again, with the same mentality that failed before, isn’t innovation—it’s regression disguised as a comeback story.
