Travis Kalanick reportedly starting a new self-driving company backed by Uber

In Brief

Travis Kalanick is reportedly starting up a caller self-driving conveyance institution with “major backing” from Uber, according to The Information. He has reportedly told radical helium “wants to beryllium much assertive successful rolling retired self-driving exertion than Waymo,” per the report.

The Uber laminitis is besides considering acquiring Pronto, the autonomous conveyance startup focused connected concern and mining sites that was created by his erstwhile workfellow astatine the ride-hailing company, Anthony Levandowski. Last year, Kalanick was said to beryllium funny successful buying the U.S. limb of Chinese self-driving conveyance institution Pony AI with backing from Uber, though The Information said Friday that those talks ended.

Uber didn’t instantly respond to a petition for comment.

Kalanick resigned from Uber successful 2017 aft a confluence of crises astatine the ride-hail company. At the time, the institution was plagued by complaints of intersexual harassment and discrimination, which sparked an outer probe that resulted successful much than 20 employees being fired.

Before that, Kalanick had created a self-driving part astatine Uber successful 2015. Levandowski played a large relation successful that task aft Kalanick lured him distant from Google. Uber was yet sued by Google for stealing secrets related to its ain self-driving car task (which yet became Waymo). The 2 companies settled, but Levandowski was criminally charged and sentenced to 18 months successful situation for his relation successful the affair. The technologist received a last-minute pardon from President Trump at the extremity of his archetypal term.

The institution kept moving connected the task aft Kalanick resigned, including aft 1 of its trial vehicles struck and killed a pedestrian successful 2018. Kalanick’s successor, Dara Khosrowshahi, shuttered and sold the division to autonomous trucking institution Aurora successful 2020.

In a uncommon interrogation successful March 2025, Kalanick expressed regret that Uber had abandoned processing its ain self-driving cars.

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