Uber Opens Door to Reunion With Ousted Founder Kalanick on Self-Driving Cars

A Striking Rapprochement

Nearly a decade after one of the most acrimonious leadership splits in Silicon Valley history, Uber and its ousted co-founder Travis Kalanick may be heading for a reunion of sorts. Speaking during a visit to India, current Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi confirmed for the first time that the company is open to collaborating with Kalanick on autonomous vehicles. "We're already working with Travis," Khosrowshahi said, adding that there are "very few entrepreneurs I trust as much" and that Uber would seriously consider opportunities in other areas.

Kalanick's Quiet Return

Kalanick, who was pushed out as Uber CEO in 2017 amid a wave of corporate scandals, spent the better part of eight years out of the spotlight. He resurfaced in March with the launch of Atoms, a robotics and autonomous vehicle company built from the shell of his holding company, City Storage Systems. Atoms absorbed his ghost kitchen business, CloudKitchens, and announced ambitions spanning the food, mining, and transportation sectors. As part of the unveiling, Kalanick disclosed he was acquiring Pronto, an autonomous vehicle start-up focused on industrial and mining use cases founded by his former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski.

Uber's Platform Pivot

The potential reconciliation reflects how dramatically the autonomous vehicle landscape has shifted Uber's strategic calculus. After offloading its in-house autonomous division to Aurora in 2020, Uber pivoted to a platform model, integrating robotaxis from partners such as Waymo, Motional, and May Mobility onto its network. According to reporting from earlier this year, Uber has committed more than $10 billion towards purchasing autonomous vehicles and taking equity stakes in AV developers, and Khosrowshahi has described self-driving as a "trillion-dollar" opportunity.

A Wheelbase for Robots

Kalanick's vision for Atoms is notably different from the humanoid robot dreams animating much of Silicon Valley. He has described the goal as creating a "wheelbase for robots" — a platform for specialised, non-humanoid machines built for industrial-scale work, from warehouse logistics to mining operations. He has reportedly told associates he wants to be more aggressive in rolling out self-driving technology than Waymo, signalling a willingness to compete head-on with the current market leader.

The Strategic Logic

For Khosrowshahi, the willingness to extend an olive branch to the man whose exit he was hired to manage underscores how high the stakes have become. With the AV race intensifying and competitors like Tesla and Chinese players pushing aggressive timelines, Uber appears intent on assembling the broadest possible coalition of partners — even if that means rekindling one of the most complicated relationships in its history. Whether the collaboration deepens into something more formal remains to be seen, but the public acknowledgement alone marks a remarkable thaw between two figures who once seemed destined never to share a stage again.