Travis Kalanick & Michael Dell Live from Austin, Texas

Travis Kalanick framed his new company, now called atoms, as an “atoms-based computer” for the physical world: software, real estate, logistics, manufacturing, mining, and transportation all become inputs to be automated. He said the first focus was food, but the broader mission is physical automation across industries, including mining equipment and specialized robots, not humanoids. He argued that automation expands where businesses can operate by reducing labor and safety constraints, and that the practical opportunity is in deploying robots in hard-to-reach or undesirable places.

He also drew a sharp contrast between Tesla and Waymo in autonomous driving, saying Waymo is ahead today but that Tesla has the harder technical challenge and could still win depending on timeline and execution. Kalanick described physical AI as early but accelerating, with a coming “ChatGPT moment” for the physical world. He also tied the rise of AI to capital strategy, saying scale and fundraising can become a competitive weapon when rivals can outspend you.

Michael Dell then discussed Texas as a growth-friendly place for founders and explained how Dell has shifted toward AI infrastructure, data centers, and enterprise AI factories. He said the business is growing rapidly, with infrastructure revenue moving from 2 billion to 50 billion, and argued that AI adoption is mostly a leadership and culture problem, not a technology problem. He also described Invest America, a $6.25B gift intended to create 401k-style accounts from birth for 25M kids.