Travis Kalanick’s robotics company, Atoms, has secured $1.7 billion in a funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. As part of the investment, Ben Horowitz will join the company’s board. The round also included participation from Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, and others. Notably, Uber joined the funding, reconnecting Kalanick with the company he founded—the same one that forced him out as CEO in 2017 amid complaints of sexual harassment, discrimination, and a toxic work environment.

Atoms is essentially a rebranded holding company built on the project Kalanick has been pursuing since leaving Uber: a ghost kitchen venture called Cloud Kitchens. When he unveiled the new name in March, Kalanick announced the acquisition of Pronto, a heavy industry automation firm run by his former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski.

In a post on X about the fundraising, Kalanick didn’t delve into specifics about his plans for Atoms. “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,” he wrote. “16 years ago, I started a journey to digitize the physical world. Understand, predict and control the physical world with software. Building ‘atoms-based’ computers where CPU is manufacturing, storage is real estate, and network is transportation.”

Kalanick has stated his goal is to build a “wheelbase for robots” with Atoms. “Travis is Back,” declared a simultaneous post from Ben Horowitz on Wednesday. “It takes a rare kind of entrepreneur to change these old-school, heavy parts of our economy. They need a gritty work ethic, drive, and range that spans across domains, from software architecture to mechanical engineering. Travis is that guy,” said Horowitz. This story is developing…