Building the Physical AI Stack | Travis Kalanick on TBPN

Summary

Podcast Summary: The a16z Show — Building the Physical AI Stack | Travis Kalanick on TBPN

Date: July 23, 2026
Host: Andreessen Horowitz (Ben Horowitz and partners)
Guest: Travis Kalanick (Former Uber CEO; founder of industrial AI company “Adams"/"TBPN")

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Episode Overview

In this lively and candid episode, Travis Kalanick joins the a16z team to discuss his ambitious new venture aimed at revolutionizing industrial sectors through physical (industrial) AI. The conversation covers Kalanick’s vision for transforming industries — from food to mining — by integrating autonomy into legacy sectors. The episode digs into the business, technical, and regulatory challenges of deploying AI in physical contexts, the philosophical differences between software and “atoms,” and Kalanick’s lessons from building both consumer-facing and infrastructure-intensive businesses.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Transition from Software to "Atoms": The Vision of Industrial AI

• From Separate Startups to a Unified "Adams":

  • Kalanick initially launched separate companies focused on food, mining, and transport automation but soon realized investors wanted to back him—the founder—so he consolidated them under one entity.

    “When I originally went to market, these were separate companies… And they're just like, we want to invest in you.” — Travis Kalanick, 04:36

• Defining "Industrial AI":

  • Kalanick positions “industrial AI” as the next frontier: bringing AI out of pure software and into transformative real-world applications:

    “…physical automation, physical AI, what we are calling industrial AI, to transform these industries one at a time.” — Travis Kalanick, 03:56

2. Go-to-Market for Mining: A Wild, Hands-On Process

• Real-World Deployment:

  • Deploying technology for legacy sectors like mining requires literal boots-on-the-ground: visiting deep Amazon mines and navigating unpredictable physical and regulatory contexts.

    “So a month ago I dropped into deep Amazon in Brazil… Amazon of the Amazon.” — Travis Kalanick, 08:07

• Value Proposition is Tangible and Immediate:

  • Mining customers’ interest is straightforward: increase output. The sales process is about demonstrating clear productivity gains (e.g., “20% more gold per year”).

    “You go to a gold mine CEO and you say, would you like to have 20% more gold per year? Absolutely. We haven't heard no.” — Travis Kalanick, 10:22

• Scaling Operations:

  • Transitioning old (often non-digital) machines to autonomy is difficult and involves significant change management and installation complexity.

    “Why does it take a long time to install? Because that machine may not even be drive by wire.” — Travis Kalanick, 17:15

3. From Lean Startup to Industrial Muscle

• Shifting Organizational Structure:
  • Early-stage teams were “lean as hell”; the challenge now is becoming “muscular” enough to build credibility and deliver at enterprise scale.

    “We gotta go from lean to muscular… the demand is there. They're like, we need you to be muscular.” — Travis Kalanick, 14:14

4. Broader Impact of Automation: Productivity, Jobs, & Prosperity

• AI’s Impact on Productivity & Cost:

  • Kalanick believes automation will both reduce prices (e.g., food delivery) and free up capital for society at large.

    "When the price of food goes down, what happens? More people have more money…money is only ultimately going to humans." — Travis Kalanick, 39:46

• Task vs. Job:

  • Many jobs involve complex combinations of tasks (not just “driving” but security, maintenance, etc.). Automation reconfigures — but does not immediately replace — all aspects of human labor.

    “Just the steering and gas and brake pressure is just one task that you're doing… how do you think about that?” — 38:25 (question)

• On New Opportunities:

  • Kalanick anticipates new, unforeseen roles and economic surpluses:

    “It's going to be across a thousand categories, and some categories we don't even know... We don't even know what they are today.” — Travis Kalanick, 41:05

5. Engineering & Building Culture: The Recruiting Pitch

• Appealing to (Certain) Young Engineers:

  • Kalanick’s pitch: Work on “science fiction” by deploying automation in the real world — "not dropping a fucking app in the app store, you're automating a 2 million pound machine."

    “You're not dropping a fucking app in the app store. You're like automating a 2 million pound machine going 35 miles an hour carrying gold.” — Travis Kalanick, 22:11

• The Kind of Builder He Wants:

  • Not looking for comfort-seekers, but for ambitious, impact-driven engineers who want to “build” in the truest sense.

    "I'm not out there pitching like lame sauce dude who doesn't want to work." — Travis Kalanick, 21:54

6. Business Models and Scaling

• Enterprise Software Mentality:

  • Pricing is based on proven productivity gains.

    “The price goes up when you prove that productivity. So there's baseline and then based on outcomes you get a little extra juice.” — Travis Kalanick, 27:16

• Acquisition or Build?

  • Kalanick prefers building to acquiring, but is open to partnerships if there’s true differentiated value.

    “In my world, we didn't acquire shit, we just built. I don't know if I have an opinion yet… but if we feel like we can build something, we do.” — Travis Kalanick, 20:56

• Scaling Constraints:

  • The bottleneck isn’t always capital or demand, but the complexity of installation and change management at each physical site.

7. Management Philosophy

• Executive Hiring:

  • Looking for executives who are epic problem solvers and can organize at scale—very rare. Problem-solving outweighs administrative prowess.

    “…the only constraint on your imagination is management capacity. But what is management capacity? It's really problem solving at scale.” — Travis Kalanick, 29:48

• Management Style:

  • “Problem Solver in Chief” — focus on the most impactful problems, propagate this mentality throughout the organization.

    “Once you have a problem solver in chief mentality, that flows downward. That means any direct report of mine must be the deputized problem solver in chief.” — Travis Kalanick, 31:18

8. Regulation & Industry Politics

• Federal vs. Local Regulation:

  • Federal preemption can be a tool for regulatory capture — used by incumbents to squeeze out competition, not something Kalanick historically favored.

    “Federal preemption is good when you are pro regulatory capture. When you want to squeeze others out…” — Travis Kalanick, 32:15

• Insurance Companies and Trial Lawyers:

  • Perverse incentives in transportation policy: insurance and lawyer lobbies have often blocked safety innovation.

    “Insurance companies make margin on accidents. If there's no accidents, there's no insurance company. They… love accidents go up.” — Travis Kalanick, 34:36

9. Philosophy of AI Safety & Human Alignment

• AI Existential Risks & Alignment:

  • More concerned with building things people want than abstract AI doom scenarios. If a product is “anti human,” it will not succeed commercially.

    “If you build something that people don't like, I don't think you're going to succeed… if you're not making stuff that humans want, it's not going to work out.” — Travis Kalanick, 24:23

• Asimov and Sci-fi Influence:

  • Kalanick’s favorite is Asimov’s “iRobot,” appreciates the nuance of the three laws but is focused on practical, real-world impact.

    “I'm like, I'm. My fave is Asimov. He's my fave. The iRobot series is just so epic.” — Travis Kalanick, 22:48

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Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Building Across Industries:
  “The announcement of Adams was we are going to do physical automation, physical AI, what we are calling industrial AI, to transform these industries one at a time.”
  — Travis Kalanick, 03:56

• On Real-World Deployment:
  “So a month ago I dropped into deep Amazon in Brazil… Amazon of the Amazon.”
  — Travis Kalanick, 08:07

• On Hiring & Leadership:
  “The most strategic, badass problem solvers alive… That’s the only constraint on your imagination is management capacity… it’s really problem solving at scale.”
  — Travis Kalanick, 29:48

• On Automation and Prosperity:
  "It's going to be across a thousand categories, and some categories we don't even know... We don't even know what they are today."
  — Travis Kalanick, 41:05

• On Regulation:
  "Federal preemption is good when you are pro regulatory capture. When you want to squeeze others out, you should get federal regulatory bigness going for you."
  — Travis Kalanick, 32:15

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Significant Timestamps

• Unifying the Companies: 04:36–05:10
• Physical Automation in Mining: 08:07–10:59
• Scaling and Organizational Lessons: 14:14–17:55
• AI Safety & Asimov’s Laws: 22:48–24:23
• Hiring Philosophy: 28:28–31:49
• Regulatory Capture and Insurance Incentives: 32:15–35:54
• Job Displacement & Automation Impact: 39:18–41:09
• Industrial AI as a Full-Stack Solution: 42:52–43:20

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Notable Moments

• Kalanick teaching tech founders to water ski as a metaphor (and real activity) for post-startup therapy and team bonding.
  [02:30]
• Describing getting non-swimmers up on wake surf boards as part of onboarding engineers.
  [02:30]
• “Unfinished business” as the rationale for his return to massive startups post-Uber.
  [03:03]
• The candid quip: “In my world, we didn't acquire shit, we just built.”
  [20:56]
• Kalanick’s view on insurance companies profiting from accidents, explaining perverse incentives in transportation.
  [34:36]

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Conclusion

Travis Kalanick’s new venture represents a bold bet that industrial AI — the fusion of software and robotics to transform legacy “atoms” businesses — will unlock unprecedented value and societal progress. The episode offers a rare, inside look at the founder’s sharp take on opportunity, organizational lessons, practical engineering, regulation, and economic impact. Kalanick’s “unfinished business” frames his relentless push into the physical AI stack, where software once “ate the world," and now aims to rebuild it.

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For more insights and future episodes: Visit a16z.com or subscribe to the A16Z podcasts.

Transcript

[Podcast Host]

Travis Kalanick joins TVPN to discuss why he's betting his next company on industrial AI. He shares his vision behind atoms, explains how autonomy is transforming industries like mining and food production, and discusses why bringing AI into the physical world may be an even bigger opportunity than software alone.

[Ben Horowitz]

Before we start, the last time you're on here, that was, for me, the best moment of making the show ever. John and I, it was. It was totally surreal and we had a. We really enjoyed the conversation. But. But to me, we left that and it was almost depressing because as somebody who, you know, started getting into startups in the 2010s, you were that guy. And then I was realizing with the show, we. We had that conversation with you, and it was, you know, a significant day for you, but it was sort of depressing because I realized, like, a moment like that would never actually come again, where I got to basically interview.

[Travis Kalanick]

It will happen.

[Ben Horowitz]

It will happen. It'll happen differently. But. But, you know, a childhood hero having that conversation, that's one of one for me. I don't think it'll happen again. There'll be other. It was peak.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

It was good.

[Ben Horowitz]

It was good. But anyways, you've been busy since then.

[Travis Kalanick]

I've been busy.

[Ben Horowitz]

And we're.

[Travis Kalanick]

I look, I'm super excited. This is my first OpenAI PODC. Yeah, I'm very excited about it. Also, I want to let you guys know that if you need therapy sessions for what it's like to be a made man in retirement.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

Like, if that's a thing, I can call you. I can help motivate you guys.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Step one of therapy in this situation. Just get a jet ski.

[Travis Kalanick]

No, it's just, it's. It's actually denial. You got to get over the denial.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Okay. Over the denial and then the acceptance.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, it's still that. I'm not a 12 step.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Everyone just knows denial and acceptance. They don't know any of the other ones. Grieving, bargaining. There's a couple others in there, but you do go through that. It's natural.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, yeah, it happens.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

But then you start building, and if

[Travis Kalanick]

you guys need advice, you need therapy, I'm here for you.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

I love it.

[Travis Kalanick]

I mean, what the maxing is. You're not supposed to do therapy. I'm just saying there are benefits.

[Ben Horowitz]

Your new partners are like, if they're one thing. They wrote into the fundraising round, they wrote into the docs, like, cannot go to therapy.

[Travis Kalanick]

That would be.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Podcasts are modern therapy for men. This is what men do. They don't go to therapy. You should have.

[Ben Horowitz]

You should have. You should have office hours for founders, but they have to just come out on a jet ski while you're going. And you're going 70 miles an hour.

[Travis Kalanick]

And you'll coach him. I'm. I am starting to teach many founders and people in tech world how to water ski, how to wake surf. A bunch of my engineers already, so there was one guy who didn't know how to swim, but I got him behind the boat wake surfing.

[Ben Horowitz]

Whoa, whoa, whoa. So you got a life jacket. Life jacket.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Life jacket on.

[Travis Kalanick]

Life jacket. It. It sounds weirder than it is. Yeah, but it was still very weird.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

It's a high risk.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, it was good, potentially. Okay, cool.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

The business.

[Travis Kalanick]

Business going well, dude. It's business time.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Got to put on the business. Socks.

[Ben Horowitz]

Unfinished business.

[Travis Kalanick]

Unfinished business. So, yeah, I announced earlier today we did a $1.7 billion raise. There's some. There's some noise that's going to happen. Wow.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

We're now one Mallet, this is.

[Travis Kalanick]

You guys are.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Do another one for downtown next time.

[Ben Horowitz]

Come over.

[Travis Kalanick]

So much noise.

[Ben Horowitz]

So much noise. All right, but walk us through.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

I feel like you came in very relaxed.

[Ben Horowitz]

Walk us through. I think it's been, what has it been, four months since we talked?

[Travis Kalanick]

Three or four months, something like that. Yeah. I think. Do we talk in April or March?

[Ben Horowitz]

I think March, yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Oh, that's right. Yes.

[Ben Horowitz]

Early March.

[Travis Kalanick]

Four months. Four months.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

So.

[Travis Kalanick]

So, yeah.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

So what happened with the business to unlock the next round?

[Travis Kalanick]

I mean, we continue to go up and to the right, but like, the announcement of Adams was we are. We are going to do physical automation, physical AI, what we are calling industrial AI, to transform these industries one at a time. Yeah, we were. We did food, we moved into mining. We're doing transport, and it's working. And so that's how you go.

[Podcast Host]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And then, of course, there's, like, going out of stealth. There's all the things. And it was just the right time.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So. So, yeah, we just went to market.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

We said. When I. When I originally went to market, I was like, these were separate companies.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Okay. So our mining and transport was a separate thing. Food was a separate thing. And. And we had a bunch of other, you know, a bunch of subsidiaries doing cool stuff. And I said, which one do you guys want to do? Do you want to invest in mining? Do you want to invest in food? Do you want to invest in this? And they're just like, we want to invest in you.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And we Heard that. Like, we talked, like the first five folks we talked to all said that.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So then what we did is we put the companies together and then sold the equity in a singular entity.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So just put. Put it together and it's much easier for me. I don't know how. How Elon does it with all the different.

[Ben Horowitz]

Different tools.

[Travis Kalanick]

It's wild.

[Ben Horowitz]

Well, no answer is what's right,

[Travis Kalanick]

guys. He did it for 20 years, though.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's still technically doing it with us.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

It's actually. They are different companies.

[Travis Kalanick]

Boring company. Neuralink.

[Ben Horowitz]

Like, he's got less than. The lesson in there for investors is like, even with Elon companies, there's such an insane power law where you have a $10 billion company and then you have a, you know, a $2 trillion company. Right. And it's like you just want exposure. You want broad exposure. Ideally, you know, you could just invest in the one that breaks out, but you want broad exposure to the category.

[Travis Kalanick]

When things are first getting going, there is a lot of upside of having them separate.

[Ben Horowitz]

Sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

Because if somebody wants to invest in a really cool thing, and this is what happened when we first got the transport and mining thing going, if they want to invest in that cool thing, they're like, I don't know anything about food, by the way. Food on its own is robotics, real estate, like restaurants, like, you know, and so they want to be exposed to that one thing, and they don't want to have to underwrite something going across all things. And they're like, well, if you're losing money over here, I want you to lose money over here. So how much of the money I'm putting in is going to go to that? There has to be a theory of the case of how you put it together, how you allocate capital across. And honestly, once you're starting to get to profitability on one or more, then that conversation starts to get easier. And I think that's. That could be why I can't speculate on sort of Elon's world. But certainly I'm super excited to have those pieces put together into a single puzzle.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

What does go to market look like in the mining industry for you?

[Travis Kalanick]

It's the frickin best.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Okay. Because specifically, like, when I think of. When I think of your go to market. So good magic it was deploying young people to a new city in Miami and they're doing a marketing stunt. And it's not like you're calling in favors or leveraging your network to get Uber up and running in a new city. That was something that was. And that's organizational design. So hold on.

[Travis Kalanick]

That's consumer.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Exactly. So how is it different?

[Travis Kalanick]

Well, it's just like. Well, all the food stuff we're doing is business. Almost all of it.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yep.

[Travis Kalanick]

Really all of it. Mining's all business. So look, there is a big thing. If you go from doing consumer to doing business. And I think we may have talked about this last time. That's a whole other ball game. I mean that takes years off your lifespan. Doing it, like getting good at it and then owning it. But mining go to market is cray cray. So I'll just give you an example.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Going to the conference or something.

[Travis Kalanick]

Well, you were meeting CEOs. Yes, you do that. But. But you know, I can a lot of times. Look, when you have very efficient transportation, you can go places. So a month ago I dropped into deep Amazon in Brazil. Okay. Like deep northern Brazil. Like Amazon places you can't even get

[Ben Horowitz]

a jet ski to.

[Travis Kalanick]

Guys, it's the Amazon of the Amazon.

[Podcast Host]

Okay, okay.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Okay.

[Travis Kalanick]

And, and like tiny airports. You just like, you kind of just dirt. You slide into the dms, except as a tarmac. Okay.

[Ben Horowitz]

There you go.

[Travis Kalanick]

And pilot. Yes, of course.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And massive iron ore mine that we're operating in there. Okay. And you see like we took, we were there for a couple days because we already have customers there.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

A customer is called valet. It's a massive mining company.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

And.

[Travis Kalanick]

And they. It's. It's like the world's largest iron ore mine. And you go and you get in a helicopter. Just going over one of the sites takes 30 minutes.

[Ben Horowitz]

Wow.

[Travis Kalanick]

Okay. And it's fascinating. It's so fascinating. And you're learning how the system works. You're sort of figuring out how do I. You basically take a kit, you apply you, you, you install it onto a machine and that machine becomes autonomous. And some of these machines are like 20 years old, some of them are new. And so there's lots of different kinds of machines as well. And you're making the mine more productive. You are making it way safer. It is super. Like they have lots of safety protocols, but like it is mining dangerous business. It is a dangerous business. And the OPEX goes down all at the same time. It's kind of a beautiful thing. And then, you know, I went from Brazil and then straight from there dropped into the border between Iraq and Saudi. On the Saudi side. So we have a phosphate mine that we're doing stuff there. The signals were jammed, so we had to like my pilots had to land kind of like old school style, like visual, physical, visual.

[Ben Horowitz]

Is that because of the conflict going

[Travis Kalanick]

on in the region and just the general.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

The vibes on the borders there? Yeah, yeah. So, but same story. And so go to market is wild. You just end up in market, literally go crazy places. But it's super needed. And so what's happened is the, the pronto technology has got gotten past human productivity, which means you go to a gold mine CEO, you talk about go to market. You go to a gold mine CEO and you say, would you like to have 20% more gold per year? Absolutely.

[Ben Horowitz]

Good stuff.

[Travis Kalanick]

We haven't heard no.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yes.

[Ben Horowitz]

Okay. Okay.

[Travis Kalanick]

But they say prove it.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And that's where the rubber meets the road. Right.

[Ben Horowitz]

How long does it take to prove it?

[Travis Kalanick]

Used to take a lot longer. Now once you've proven it enough times, then it sort of gets its own momentum, gets around. And so we're in that place on pronto where that momentum is taking hold because there's enough proof points where it's just working in so many different places where people are like, all right, let's go. We're going to think of mining, autonomous mining, almost like, almost like enterprise software where you get a pilot, there's like a 10,000 person company and you've got, you, you, you got an enterprise startup and they're like, I got like eight seats. But it's this huge company and if we edit, it's huge.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And I've got this other 10 seats over at this other one. It's a pilot, but I swear it's going to work. And they're out there pitching and trying to make it happen. Yeah, but once it works and in mining that means human productivity, human level better than human productivity. Once it works, it goes big and they're like, okay, let's get across all the vehicles. And so we're sort of in that mode with a bunch of different customers right now.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

How big is the opportunity to just increase uptime of mining operations? I imagine that there are mines that are trying to operate 247 but getting a night shift in the middle of the Amazon reliably, everyone showing up and being, you know, healthy and happy and eager. It gets a lot easier when it's like, yeah, we're still going to have a bunch of people on site but they're going to be overseeing robotic workshops.

[Travis Kalanick]

So. So yeah, I mean the, there's two parts to the productivity game. First is the machine per hour doing more. Yeah, that's Part one, part two is hours and call outs and all of that stuff, as well as just, you know, the safety protocols change when you have less risk.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So there's a lot of things like this that pile onto each other. My guess is you could even end up 30%, 40% more productive at the end of all of it. And when you do that, the opportunity speaks for itself. A gold mine that's doing 30 or 40% more gold per year is kind of. Whoa. But that's for every mineral. That's lithium. That's like. We also go all the way down to quarries. Quarries are different because quarries are basically. It's about cement. Let's just say that's the main jam. There are others, but let's just go with that. You don't just go do more rock because you need cement. Customers on the other side, they're only using so much cement.

[Ben Horowitz]

Like, where do you store it?

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, exactly. And so that's more of an OPEX play. And there are thinner margins there. But I'm in the game, and it's kind of interesting. It's a lot of fun. And for that company, for Pronto, they were super. Anthony Levandowski and the team there, super scrappy, true startup style. Lean as hell. Like, so lean. Like that Christian Bale movie. I can't remember the name of it. The machinist dude is like, super lean. And I'm like, guys, we gotta go from lean to muscular.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

You gotta go to Batman.

[Travis Kalanick]

And that's what we're doing. Like, and you think of that this in and muscular.

[Ben Horowitz]

That's a good. That's a good.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah. You don't get. You just want to be muscular.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so you think about enterprise go to market. Part of our go to market is. Is building credibility with our enterprise customers that we're going from lean to muscular because they. The demand is there. It's ready to go. They're like, we need you to be muscular. We need the protein powder and the whatever else.

[Ben Horowitz]

What holds you back?

[Travis Kalanick]

Go to the gym.

[Ben Horowitz]

What holds you back from scaling? Let's say you do a pilot. It works well. You're attaching hardware to existing systems and hardware that they're using. And they say, okay, we're getting more out. Maybe we want to place orders for more machines. I imagine the lead times on some of this mining equipment could be insane. How much of the stack do you want to own?

[Travis Kalanick]

Say the question again. I'm sorry, I just blanked. Go for it one more time.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right now, you're taking existing Mining equipment and you're augmenting it with. You're bringing, you're, you're making it AI enabled, you're making it autonomous, you're making it more efficient. And they say great, this is working. We want to scale up our operation because maybe we need less or we can do more with the same, you know, human headcount. Yep. But what's the. I imagine there's some things that are out of control for, for you at that point where they're like, okay, we need more of this heavy mining equipment. Let's. Let's add it to the site. But is there like a lag time there?

[Travis Kalanick]

The real lag time is getting. So you have to, you're. So let's say we want to get a bunch of machines that are in the Amazon up and running.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Okay, how do you do that? So I've got to ship a bunch of sensors, a bunch of compute, a bunch of equipment and mechanical systems, let's just say. So that a team can then go install it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah. So you're basically building a data center on site.

[Travis Kalanick]

I wouldn't put it that way. I would say, I mean if you considered a machine with sensors and compute a data center, I mean you could. But it's really think of those. There are servers, but I wouldn't say a data center. It's not really.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Some operations bring like an armada style like shipping container size level of. You're just volunteer as one.

[Travis Kalanick]

So you bring in the stuff.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Okay. You have to install it. You have to like bring it up and make sure, okay, this is a new place. Does this machine work properly in this new place and calibrate and make sure it's safe and all of this. So there's like a process of getting it up. Then there's change management because that site's going from. There are people that show up in the morning. There's all this very regimented process to make sure everything's going exactly as planned and people are exactly where they're supposed to be because otherwise weird things happen on a mining site. So you have to go from that to okay, we're now running a autonomous mining operation. It's just a very different thing. So the installation and the bring up and what we call commissioning are sort of like the things you have to do. And why does it take a long time to install? Because that machine may not even be drive by wire.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So you have a mechanical system. Like if you turn the steering wheel, like it's. You know what I mean? It's a mechanical system, hydraulic. So you're bringing where you have to

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

go actuator that might push a physical button.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. You're trying to make electricity then do a physical thing. So then you need physical actuation to do the things. Because it's not. These machines are not natively dry by wire.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, that's not all machines. That sounds incredibly difficult but necessary because you're not going to get a mine to rip out tens of millions of dollars of equipment that they already have. But would you eventually go full stack? Like build the entire.

[Travis Kalanick]

I mean look, we ultimately, I mean if you go in the mining industry there's like this, this term, it's called no entry mine. A no entry mine is a mine where there are no people in the lights out factory. Yeah. Kind of like that version version of it. There might be people in a control center. There might be. But like in that pit, no humans.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

And it's a wildly different calculus from a safety perspective I imagine.

[Travis Kalanick]

Totally different obviously. And so there's drilling, there's blasting, there's loading, there's haulage, there's crushing. I'm just going through the different parts of the mining operation and what you do is you start somewhere and then you start extending to those other areas to get to that no entry thing. And the no entry thing is you can have an autonomous thing. Like, like our haulage system is autonomous. If you're getting into a new place you can do remote control and move into autonomous. If you want to go super no entry or lower entry line, if that makes sense. It's, it's super fascinating. And then you're talking about, you're talking about loaded a 2 million pound machine that's moving potentially 35 miles an hour down the road. And it's an off road thing.

[Ben Horowitz]

2 million pound machine moving 35 miles an hour off road.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, dude.

[Ben Horowitz]

This is why you have to.

[Travis Kalanick]

This is like this is the ultimate atv. So no, you get in it and you can, you know, you can experience it. I mean it's not like there's like a amusement park for this but like I've certainly experienced it where I can get in the, I get in the machines and, and check out what's going on.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

This is like the dump truck or any of these 20 foot tires essentially.

[Ben Horowitz]

Are any of these, are any of these companies like acquisition targets where you would, you would be able to come in and say like you're doing a lot of stuff. Well, but here's all the stuff that you're never going to Figure out, like us.

[Travis Kalanick]

And I mean, look, I would say the way we think about it is the, the haulage part of a mine is where most of the vehicles are. And so. And we think of haulage as the cardiovascular system of a mine. So we're obviously very connected to all the other machines, but we don't do all the other machines. So we're like in an ecosystem so we can work with them where there's APIs. Because if you're doing haulage, you need to know where the other machines are and what their status is. As an example, there needs to be orchestration coordination there, which is pretty interesting in terms of acquisition, I have to admit. The Uber mentality. My mentality, let's just say.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, my Dune.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, yeah. It's like not, I guess the words different today, but in my world, we didn't acquire shit, we just built.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah, that's right.

[Travis Kalanick]

I don't know if I have an opinion yet. I'm not like religious about it, but if we feel like we can build something, we do.

[Podcast Host]

But that.

[Travis Kalanick]

But sometimes people have differentiated awesome stuff and you're like, let's partner. We're open to it.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

You know, how would you pitch me if I was a young person, Stanford cs, new grad, worried about software engineering not being the easy path where I can bounce around from Google and maybe Uber had a cushy job for me. Pitch me on going to the Amazon and building.

[Travis Kalanick]

I mean, that's awesome. I thought I just did. I mean, that was a good pitch. That was the pitch.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Do you think young people are receptive to this pitch yet? Are we about to be receptive? Why should they be receptive?

[Travis Kalanick]

It's really interesting. Run into the young people that are receptive.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

Like I'm not out there pitching like lame sauce dude who doesn't want to work.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure, sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

Like, I don't know. I don't end up in the same room.

[Ben Horowitz]

Do you want to. Do you want a. A job where you want a laptop job, or do you want to be dropped in to a mine in the Amazon and like build, build, you know, science fiction.

[Travis Kalanick]

This is the thing, right? This is why the Adam's thing is cool. Because you're not dropping a, you're not dropping a fucking app in the app Store. You're like automating a 2 million pound machine going 35 miles an hour carrying gold.

[Ben Horowitz]

Do you, do you watch? Do you get.

[Travis Kalanick]

There's a lot of profanity happening today. I don't know why it's happening, but it is.

[Ben Horowitz]

Oh, let it flow.

[Travis Kalanick]

I just wanted to acknowledge it.

[Ben Horowitz]

Do you, do you watch science? Do you get inspired by science fiction at all? I can imagine, like watching Dune for you. You're just like texting pictures to the team. Of course.

[Travis Kalanick]

I'm like, I'm. My fave is Asimov. He's my fave. The iRobot series is just so epic.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

What is your takeaway from the iRobot series with regard to AI safety doom generally? Have you ever had moments of maybe we won't figure it out?

[Travis Kalanick]

Won't figure what out?

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

The alignment problem, broadly, like the iRobot, the three laws of robotics. Elegant solution tested, obviously. But I love to come back to a world where everyone, both the Doomers and the AI builders agree that, yep, the three laws of robotics will be

[Travis Kalanick]

in some ways, well, in some ways in the series. The three laws don't always work out.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So I think there's a lot of, I thought there's a lot of nuance to those three laws, even though the laws are sort of so simple. I love the intention of those laws. I sort of think of it a little bit differently, which is I have been entrepreneuring for a long time, like a long time, and I have failed. And when I think about why I failed, it's usually because I was building something that nobody liked. So if you build something that people don't like, I don't think you're going to succeed. So how does that relate to your question? He's like, please tell me, because I'm not connecting the dots at all.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

What are you talking about?

[Travis Kalanick]

Well, if you make something that is anti human, if you make something that doesn't serve people, I don't think you're going to make it. I don't think you're going to make it. And by the way, like, yes, we're using AI to help us make decisions, etc. But what do those AIs really, really want to do? Almost too much. They want to please us. So I just think if you're not making stuff that humans want, it's not going to work out. And that's kind of obvious, obviously, but I think it keeps going. And yes, there's the dangers and the things and the this, but that's my starting point for how I think about these things. And we can't control all the things. And I do think, of course you have to have safety situations and there's collisions of like, what do I, what do I prioritize first and how do I do it? Which is I think where Asimov's laws go. But I, instead of writing sci fi books, I'm just doing the thing and I'm making sure that the machine stays on the road.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yes. And related to that idea of like doing the thing, making the machine stay on the road, I imagine that your, your worldview is somewhat informed by your contact with reality. The fact that you can see the progress of diffusion, how long drive by wire systems take took to roll out and the need for AI to be deployed in like tactile ways that

[Ben Horowitz]

you

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

just see it as more positive sum or there's more opportunity.

[Travis Kalanick]

I feel like you're deploying robots that people want right now. Robot. I mean look, there's some point where robots have their own bank accounts and their citizens and all this. We're just not there yet.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure, sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

And before we, until we get there.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

That robot is owned by somebody.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And that somebody has a bank account.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

They are paying based on the value you're bringing them because they like your stuff. So if you are doing things that humans don't like, you're done.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And trust me, I've done it.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

I've built things that nobody liked and it sucked.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

I don't recommend anybody do it. If you can avoid it, you totally should.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

On the business model side, what are you doing now in mining and where do you think it could go over time? Because if you're able to bring in a system that helps someone increase their yield 30 to 40%, I imagine eventually just do some type of JV so that your guys have incentives.

[Travis Kalanick]

There's, you know, and the instinct should be how do enterprise software companies do it? Start there and you guys will know that you know that.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

What's the answer? Let's just say your enterprise software company, you're making a company more productive. What do you do?

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Raise prices Subscription or you.

[Travis Kalanick]

The price goes up when you prove that productivity. So there's baseline and then based on outcomes you get a little extra juice.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure, sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

And you can.

[Ben Horowitz]

Or you're always trying to make sure that like you want to be producing, creating more value than you're capturing. But there's this sort of cat and mouse game where you're always trying to. You don't want to give away maybe too much value here.

[Travis Kalanick]

Totally. But here's the thing. You never go to a customer. I don't care what you're selling. Okay.

[Podcast Host]

I don't care.

[Travis Kalanick]

Is enterprise software. I don't care if it's widgets I don't care what it is. You never go to a customer and say, give me a percentage of your stuff. Yeah. You go to a customer and say, here's the price of our stuff and if it does really well for you, we think we should get a little more scratch cachesh stuff, you know, whatever. You know what I mean?

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And it's that simple. Don't be crass about it. And partner with folks and they're down. They want to win too. It's literally an enterprise. It's an enterprise software style negotiation or approach to the whole thing. And the more differentiated your value is, the more you're going to get.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

What is your process for hiring executives today?

[Travis Kalanick]

Pray.

[Ben Horowitz]

I was hoping, I was hoping you had the Kalanic system to achieve a 99.

[Travis Kalanick]

I know, but why would I tell you? Why would I tell you? No. I mean.

[Ben Horowitz]

No, but I think you can. This is one of those things. You can tell people exactly what you do and they're not, they're not Kalanic. So they're not. It doesn't, that doesn't mean they can compete with you.

[Travis Kalanick]

You know, they could, they. Yeah. Okay, so how would I put it? Look, I think no matter who you go, nobody's nailed executives all the way. It's, it's, it's weird because what will happen is executives talk a awesome game and there's two things you want an executive to do. You want them to be able to organize at scale. Organize and manage at scale, lead at scale. You also want them to be epic problem solvers. The most strategic, badass problem solvers alive. This is like being left handed or right handed. And there's very few people that are ambidextrous. But you need that now. Somebody's, they're always leaning a little bit one side or the other. The best executives are the ones that are doing both well. But I have come to the conclusion over my years doing the stuff is the problem solving is the most important thing.

[Ben Horowitz]

Thing.

[Travis Kalanick]

If you get somebody who organizes and manages well but cannot solve a problem, they're going to be doing ridiculous stuff in a super organized way. And so that's the, and, and sort of my theory. I, maybe there's a couple theories on how I manage or how I lead is that the only constraint on your imagination is management capacity. But what is management capacity? It's really problem solving at scale.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

Because if you are doing super well over there, guess what? They're problem solving there. I can create other awesome problems.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Like I love Creating problems.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

Go solve those too. Yeah. But if I don't have the management capacity, then I'm effed.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

So the, the management style that I do is sort of problem solver in chief, which is I take the most impactful problems that are not being solved, and that's on my desk. Yeah, the. Or desk or room or whatever you want to call it. That's where I'm spending my time. So people go, oh, what do you spend your time on? Like, it depends what the fricking problems are that matter. And it can change. And that's how I roll. But it means once you have a problem solver in chief mentality that flows downward. That means any direct report of mine must be the deputized problem solver in chief. And they've got their. Because there's only 24 hours in a day, I can only solve so many myself. They have to then take that for their world and do the same thing. And then do the same thing to their people.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

So the bottom line is you gotta prove that these folks can solve actual problems and aren't just talking the talk. That's the number one. And then on the interview process, simulate what it's like working together so that day one really feels like week two and day one, you better be excited. So if you're excited in day one, after simulating what it's like working together in the interview process, then day one is really week two and you're still excited. You took a lot of risk out of the system. That's all I got for you.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

I have a question about regulation. Uber famously went city by city. The AI labs are duking it out over federal preemption. Did you ever have develop a theory around when federal preemption is better than state by state regulation? Do you have a philosophy around this? It seems like the labs go back and forth on what they want. It's hard to see where the chips are falling.

[Travis Kalanick]

Federal preemption is good when you are pro regulatory capture.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Okay.

[Travis Kalanick]

When you want to squeeze others out, you should get federal regulatory bigness going for you.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah. Because then you don't have to do the ground game that you win.

[Travis Kalanick]

Well, no, you're squeezing others out. Okay. It's just the whole point is to squeeze everybody out.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

I never did that. Like, we never did that Uber. We basically never ever proposed or pushed any rule that would be beneficial to us versus somebody else. We always were trying to open up the market and we said, let the best man win and we just went for it. But I think we got to be careful of some of these close weight things that are creating situations where they need to be regulated and they want it. I'd be very. I'd keep an eye on that.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah, well, you got to have customers that love your product and are willing to.

[Travis Kalanick]

So when you guys, when you guys, you know, decide to tell your own hacker to hack the thing and then go to somebody, then go to the federal government and say, then go to the federal government and say, dude, we saved the day. Like, you know, you don't have, you don't have to meet. You guys don't have to do this. You guys don't have to do it.

[Ben Horowitz]

On regulation. I'm sure you saw the trial lawyers that are fighting back against autonomous vehicles because they're worried they're going to be too safe. Yes, I'm sure that's not surprising to you.

[Travis Kalanick]

No. So look, every bad thing that you see in transportation, like systemically, anything in transport that you view as systemically bad was most likely pushed by the trial lawyers and the insurance companies.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Wow.

[Travis Kalanick]

Every single bad rule. That's weird and dumb. The insurance companies and the trial lawyers were in the game big time.

[Ben Horowitz]

Where, where do they align?

[Travis Kalanick]

What do you mean?

[Ben Horowitz]

Well, because trial lawyers, I imagine, want more accidents.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Insurance companies.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Insurance are the ones that pay for it. Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

No, no. Remember, insurance companies make margin on accidents.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Okay.

[Travis Kalanick]

If there's no accidents, there's no insurance company. They, in a weird way, they love accidents go up. As long as it's in their actuarial table, they're pumped.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Wow.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, right. What they don't like is accidents they didn't plan for.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Sure, sure.

[Travis Kalanick]

But accidents that they planned for business, big insurance outcomes they love. Like, I remember we went to DC and the taxi system, the, the liability on a ride, if you took a taxi, it might still be this way to this day. Was like $25,000 in a taxi. But we went to, we being Uber at the time, went to D.C. and they pushed a one and a half million dollar policy per ride. Okay, so what does that mean? That means, well, this, you know, accidents are going to happen. We're probably like, Uber's probably safer. But it just. You think the trial lawyers weren't pumped about that? You think the insurance companies weren't also pumped about that?

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

They can go get up to a million.

[Travis Kalanick]

Because by the way, the insurance company might be on the other side and they're like, oh, there's a, there's a $1.5 million bank account here that I can get access to on a random accident.

[Ben Horowitz]

Right. What can you share on the transportation side of the business right now? How much are you, how much is that business in service of mining or food versus it's number one.

[Travis Kalanick]

So number one is it's, it's. So I call it wheelbase for robots. Which is if you're going to do specialized robots that move and act in the physical world, they're either humanoids, which we're not. I'm not anti humanoid. I'm just non humanoid. Specialized industrial robots. Right. So that's, it's high scale industrial scale tasks. Which means you would not have a humanoid ever do that. That means you got to be on wheels. So we got to build wheels. So that means. Okay, well when food, when supply chain is going into our facilities, that's a freight vehicle. We probably should just turn that into a robot that moves stuff and actually interfaces with our facility in a really cool way. When the food is coming out of our facilities, there's probably like a machine that holds food at temperature. That's like a box on wheels. I call them autonomous burritos. And it brings it to your home and it costs 75 cents instead of the $12 per drop that it costs like an Uber Eats or doordash today. So it's serving. Remember I, I'm taking, I'm sort of going through an industry and saying how do we transform it full stack. How do we automate full stack that entire industry? So okay, that's the food thing. Obviously mining's pretty obvious, but you can imagine there's a lot of other machines that move. Like I talked about haulage. But what about like, what about grading the roads? The dirt roads. You got to grade them. That's a machine.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

What about the, you spray water so there's not a lot of dust all over the place. That's a fricking machine. Like what about the material that ultimately goes somewhere beyond the mine? Well, that's a freight machine. Like there's lots of things moving.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

You know, I saw something that's like think about just forklifts. I know a company remain unnamed, that's spending three and a half. This is on a supply chain side. Three and a half billion, billion a year on forklift labor in their facilities.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

That probably shows up in an SEC filing if we want to get creative and figure that out. What company you're talking about.

[Travis Kalanick]

You're saying.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

But you see, yeah, big opportunity if

[Travis Kalanick]

you just solve the forklift problem.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yes. But on solving the problem, what do you Think about this. This distinction between jobs versus tasks. Like, a lot of people would have assumed that there would be no more marketing people because the job is just writing marketing copy, but the job is actually much more writing copies. One task, I was looking at automated trucking and I found some stat. Like, I think 30% of truck drivers are armed. They carry weapons. And so driving the vehicle is one task. But in that job, you are also providing security from that payload. And you are also doing other things, refueling the vehicle, maybe some minor maintenance. And so just the. Just the steering and gas and brake pressure is just one task that you're doing. How do you think about that in the context of all this?

[Travis Kalanick]

This really gets to the jobs question, I think.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

Which is basically like, okay, well, if I do everything that we are imagining on food, which is. I have industrial real estate, which is manufacturing and logistics, I automate the manufacturing, which is production.

[Podcast Host]

Robotic food.

[Travis Kalanick]

Robotic food machines. Robots. And I have robotic couriers. What happens?

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Food.

[Travis Kalanick]

The price of food goes down.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Okay.

[Travis Kalanick]

When the price of food goes down, remember, robots don't have bank accounts. When the price of food goes down, what happens? More people have more money.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Jevin's paradox.

[Travis Kalanick]

What do they do?

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

You start eating more. They just started having 10.

[Travis Kalanick]

No, that's not.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Everyone's going to eat fat. This is you.

[Travis Kalanick]

This is hilarious. It's not what I'm saying.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

That's not what I'm saying.

[Travis Kalanick]

No, what I'm saying is, what I'm saying is, when once you.

[Ben Horowitz]

I was going to get three pizzas,

[Travis Kalanick]

you're like one cent the price. No, no, no. So what happens? You have more money to do other things, but remember that money is only ultimately going to humans.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

So it's. It's the things that get automated go down in price.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

Which then creates surplus.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

To do what?

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yes.

[Travis Kalanick]

Is the other thing.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah. This is the bomb.

[Travis Kalanick]

So it doesn't always have to be, oh, marketing's automated, but sort of. And there's still people doing it. It's like, whatever. There's going to be a hundred other new things that come out because there's this excess of capital and progress continues.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yep.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And as long as humans still have things that we do that robots cannot.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yep.

[Travis Kalanick]

It's go, go time, man. It's going to be super prosperity. We talked about the plumber that is paid like LeBron last time.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

It's going to be across a thousand categories, and some categories we don't even know.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host]

Like we.

[Travis Kalanick]

We don't even Know what they are today?

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

You raised 1.7 billion. Why didn't you raise more?

[Travis Kalanick]

That's a good question.

[Ben Horowitz]

I mean, because last time we were here, you talked about like, oh, well, if what you, if you were doing something and it was easy, you weren't going hard enough.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Seems pretty. Going pretty hard.

[Travis Kalanick]

But look, you have to stop somewhere. No, no, it's like. But like, look, I. As you can imagine, today my phone's blowing up. I mean, I'm pumped like a 16. These guys, we, we should have done business at Uber.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

That's right.

[Travis Kalanick]

If we did it business at Uber, my 2017 would have been a different year.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Yeah, okay.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Totally.

[Travis Kalanick]

So that's why I called it unfinished business.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

And so. But yeah, like, my phone's blowing up. Like, we're probably just going to do a second. We'll do a second close.

[Ben Horowitz]

Here we go.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

I figured come back for the second close.

[Travis Kalanick]

Run it back. No, I mean, we're not going to do a big announcement on the second close. But like, you know those people who are, who are texting me and hitting me hard right now?

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

We got room.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah, no, well, we'll see, we'll see,

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

we'll see. Depends on what? The previous text message.

[Travis Kalanick]

If you're a homie. Yeah, if we're not a homie, you should talk to one of my homies.

[Ben Horowitz]

There we go.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

I did come away from the last conversation thinking, all right, there's a lot of exciting companies in physical AI and you could spend years and years and years trying to find all the best teams, or you could just give TK a big pile of cash and just say, go cook. And, you know, sometimes the easier route is better.

[Travis Kalanick]

Yeah. And I think there's this thing, physical AI People are like, well, is that a humanoid? Is that a world model? Is it? And so on this one, I sort of dialed the language a little bit and am calling it industrial AI. Yeah, it's like, okay, this is a full stack software, robotics, sensors, machinery. Like a full stack solution to automating an industry. And that's kind of how we think about it. And it's industrial.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yep.

[Travis Kalanick]

So it's like heavy atom stuff. Yeah.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Well, thank you so much.

[Ben Horowitz]

This is incredible.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

You want to get a signature? Can we get an autograph?

[Travis Kalanick]

Sure, why not?

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Can we get something which way?

[Ben Horowitz]

They can figure it out back there. Oh, we got a gong. We'll hang it in the raft.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

We want to hang it in the rafters.

[Ben Horowitz]

We're trying to build our museum of business.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

The Museum of Business grows one gong stronger today.

[Ben Horowitz]

And we will. We'll see you in Austin.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Yeah.

[Ben Horowitz]

Next time you're on your commute, if you see two jet skis moving out of, out of your, you know, out of out of sight coming in, it's probably us.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

That's us.

[Ben Horowitz]

If it's not you're guys, let me know.

[Travis Kalanick]

If you want to learn how to slalom ski.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Oh yeah.

[Travis Kalanick]

If you want to learn how to wake surf, like, well, I've only been

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

water skiing once or twice.

[Travis Kalanick]

30. I go into 7:30 in the morning every morning and I'd say half the time I'm out there at 8:30 when I leave the office.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

That's amazing.

[Travis Kalanick]

So hello. That's what we do.

[Ben Horowitz]

Beauty of summer.

[Andreessen Horowitz Partner]

Thank you so much coming on the show. Always a pleasure.

[Podcast Host]

Thanks for listening to this episode of the A16Z podcast. If you like this episode, be sure to like, comment, subscribe, leave us a rating or review and share it with your friends and family. For more episodes, go to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Follow us on X16Z and subscribe to our [e-mail] thanks again for listening and I'll see you in the next episode. This information is for educational purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy, hold, or sell any investment or financial product. This podcast has been produced by a third party and may include paid promotional advertisements, other company references, and individuals unaffiliated with academic Such advertisements, companies and individuals are not endorsed by AH Capital Management, LLC, A16Z or any of its affiliates. Information is from sources deemed reliable on the date of publication, but A16Z does not guarantee its accuracy.