The next wave of restaurant innovation may be driven as much by robotics and artificial intelligence as by food itself.
Atoms—the newly launched parent company of CloudKitchens—has raised US$1.7 billion in fresh equity funding to accelerate automation across restaurants and other industrial sectors, marking one of the largest funding rounds in restaurant technology this year.
The investment is led by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), with participation from Uber and several other institutional investors. As part of the transaction, a16z co-founder Ben Horowitz will join Atoms’ board of directors. The company has also secured debt financing from Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.
While CloudKitchens remains one of Atoms’ flagship businesses, the new entity brings together a portfolio that includes restaurant operating system Otter, robotics company Lab37, workplace food platform Picnic, ProFood Properties, and industrial automation businesses spanning logistics, mining and transportation.
In his X post, Kalanick wrote, “Atoms’ biggest obstacle going forward will be nature and its resistance to change. Nature is going to throw everything it has at the builders in this new industrial age and it’s going to take humanity’s strongest to stay the course and get these complex systems and industries over the finish line.”
