Travis Kalanick's robotics startup taps Meta veteran for top AI role

Atoms CEO Travis Kalanick. Michael Kovac/Getty Images for Vanity Fair Longtime Meta executive Vikas Chandra is joining Travis Kalanick's Atoms as vice president of AI Chandra spent more than eight years at Meta working on AI for smart glasses The hire comes as Kalanick staffs up Atoms following a $1.7 billion raise. Travis Kalanick's new robotics startup, Atoms, has scooped up a high-profile hire. Vikas Chandra, a longtime Meta AI executive who led AI work for the company's smart glasses, announced Monday that he is joining the startup as vice president of AI. At Atoms, Chandra said he will build "foundation models for the physical world" — AI systems designed to help machines understand and act in real-world environments. "For 8 years my job was making models small enough and fast enough to live on AI glasses," Chandra wrote on X. "The physical world is a harder version of the same problem." Atoms and Chandra did not respond to requests for comment. Atoms, which has revealed few details about its work, says it is building robots for industries including food, mining, and transportation. Kalanick, who co-founded Uber in 2009 but resigned under investor pressure in 2017, publicly un