Co-founder of Uber, Uber
Search every verified Travis Kalanick interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Travis Kalanick, the co-founder and former CEO of Uber, spoke publicly in mid-2026 about his early experiences building the company and his recent work. In a July appearance at CLS 2026, Kalanick described the origin of Uber as a simple idea conceived with a friend in Paris, where they wished they could "push a button and get a ride." He recounted that three months after launch, Uber received a cease-and-desist order from San Francisco and California, which he said threatened 90 days in jail for each ride. Kalanick also criticized the taxi medallion system, stating that a license originally given for free in New York City had become worth $1.1 million, leading to what he described as unjust treatment of drivers. He said he is drawn to "problems where I see injustice" and that Uber was about "unsucking cities." In a June 2026 interview with Spear's at FII Priority Europe in Rome, Kalanick discussed his eight-year period of operating "full stealth" after leaving Uber. He said that during that time, his company Atoms employed around 4,000 people but "nobody could put the name of the company on LinkedIn" due to negative press. Kalanick described Atoms' mission as "physical automation to transform industry," focusing on robotics and AI for food, mining, and transport. He commented that the business environment has changed, noting that "business is politics" and warning that overly aggressive wealth taxes could drive innovation centers away from cities. Kalanick described himself as "accidentally provocative" and said he enjoys having ideas that "everybody thinks is terrible, but you know, is good."
“And so Uber was about unsucking cities.”
“you know, one of the things that I will often chase are problems that are complicated, but problems where I see injustice. If I see a driver who is being treated in an unjust way, I want to fight for that driver. And if I see things that are unjust for in cities, I want to do something about it.”
“Truth and justice are the immune system for society. When the immune system is suppressed, all the social ills flare up.”
“Capital as a strategic weapon for its own sake is not a thing, but when it is actually a strategic weapon, then it is a thing. In the Uber days, if you didn't have capital it didn't matter how good your app was because a competitor could pour in huge sums and take market share — raising capital better than everyone els...”
“Capital becomes a strategic weapon, which means you must be the best at getting capital in order to win.”
“When 95% of all press is negative, you're like, why engage? I went under the radar so I could wake up every day and just get to work and build.”
“I see a large IPO on the horizon.”
“The strong form of tall poppy syndrome does lead to lower startup formation. If you think that you will immediately be cut down in your society, you don't actually go out and hunt. You actually don't go out and bring back the the the big deer or whatever you're hunting. The bacon. Yeah. you don't bring home the bacon i...”
“In the short run the market is a vibe war, but in the long run it's a weighing machine. He he of course is is quoted as saying in the short term it's a popularity contest or a voting machine and in the long term it's a weighing machine. uh in the idea that uh in the short term uh prices are determined by you know peopl...”
“Until we get super AGI, humans are valuable. And they are going to become more and more valuable because they will be the long pole in the tent to progress. And that progress is going to accelerate and get faster and more, you know, more robust. Except if you're a plumber, you're crushing.”
“We've paid out over 70 billion to the music industry. 11 billion of those just last year. I want to be clear, that's more than anyone has paid anyone ever in the music industry. And not only that, you know, in the CD era, the the sort of distributor, the the record store, they, you know, we we give about 70% of what we...”
“Because if it does, you can do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car.”
“In order to make that happen, you need to roboticize or automate the production of food and leverage AV technology to move that food to people; if you take those two things and automate them, you will bring the cost down almost to the point of the cost of the food itself.”
“I call it digitizing the physical world — treating atoms like bits — how do you get the efficiencies of the bits world and apply it to the physical world?”
“The online delivery world's a bit over $100 billion, probably about $120, but the hands-down winner of meals is the home — if you could get an online-delivered meal as cost-efficient as going to the grocery store, you could do to the kitchen what Uber did to the car.”
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Travis Kalanick, former CEO of Uber explains why - and how - he went 'full stealth' for almost a decade. Speaking to Spear's at FII Priority Europe in Rome, Kalanick tells editor-in-chief Edwin Smith why he built his business Atoms out of the public eye. For 8 years, Kalanick worked with 4,000 employees but 'nobody could put the name of the company on LinkedIn,' he says. And when it was time to come out, he found a very different world, he explains. 'Now, we realise that business is politics.' In this conversation: -How Kalanick wants to continue revolutionising industries with robotics and…
(0:00) Travis Kalanick: Officially exiting stealth mode, what he's been working on (5:52) How to automate the physical world, ...
This is our full interview with Travis Kalanick, recorded live on TBPN. We discuss why he kept City Storage Systems in stealth for nearly eight years before reemerging as Atoms, unpack how his bet on real estate, robotics, autonomous delivery, and industrial infrastructure is designed to bring the economics of prepared food closer to grocery-store prices, and debate what the next era of physical AI could look like from mining and transport to specialized robotics, capital wars, and a future where human labor becomes the critical bottleneck in an increasingly automated world. TBPN is a live t…
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