Atoms hires ex-Uber finance chief Gautam Gupta as CFO

Gautam Gupta, the former finance chief under Kalanick at Uber, said in social media posts on Wednesday that he has joined Atoms, Kalanick’s robotics and industrial AI startup, as chief financial officer — just a few weeks after Atoms raised $1.7 billion. Gupta spent more than four years at Uber before leaving in July 2017, a few weeks after Kalanick resigned as CEO; Gupta had announced his intention to leave that May.

The hire continues a pattern of Kalanick reassembling former Uber colleagues at Atoms. Earlier this year, Atoms acquired mining-autonomy startup Pronto, run by former Uber (and former Google) self-driving engineer Anthony Levandowski. According to LinkedIn, a number of other former top Uber employees who worked with Kalanick also work at Atoms, which was previously called CloudKitchens.

Uber itself joined Atoms’ $1.7 billion round as an investor, reuniting the company with the founder it pushed out in 2017 after a series of scandals and complaints of widespread sexual harassment and discrimination. Uber hasn’t disclosed how much it contributed, though The Information reported $100 million, a figure TechCrunch has also confirmed. Kalanick has said he wants Atoms to work on mining, food and transportation.

Gupta invested in Uber in 2012 while a vice president at Goldman Sachs, then joined the company in 2013. He co-founded venture firm A* in 2020, after three years at Opendoor; A* invested in Atoms in what Gupta described as the largest investment in the fund’s history, and he is stepping down from A* to take the CFO role, according to his LinkedIn profile. “The single biggest reason I joined was — Travis. I believed he possessed a magical mix of genius and intensity that made me want to bet on the person, not the market,” Gupta wrote Wednesday.

Why it matters

The hire shows how much of Atoms’ buildout still runs through Kalanick’s old Uber network — one that now includes Uber itself as a financial backer of its former CEO’s new venture.