The Ledger
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China Forced Apple To Invest $1 Billion Into Didi, Kalanick Claims
“They made Apple invest a billion dollars in Didi, and Apple doesn't invest anything in anybody.”
Kalanick: Under-16 social media bans aim to de-anonymize adults for censorship
“The real point of banning under-sixteen is so that you can force adults to identify themselves and de-anonymize themselves so you can set up a full-scale censorship regime, which they're sort of contemplating in the UK.”
Travis Kalanick reveals he rejected Masa Son's money for funding competitors
“I did not take money from Masa. So he begged me to take money for years, and we did not take it because he is a, he's a, what's the word I'm looking for? He's a promiscuous investor. So once he invests in you should probably count on him and using your informa…”
Kalanick: Major Uber Investor Ran 6-Month PR Opposition Campaign Against Him
“If an investor is running a political oppo campaign against you for six months, sort of generating a crisis every week for six months straight, it's going to wear you down.”
Kalanick argues 2021 tech bubble was driven by zero interest-rate policy
“I don't believe it was a physical versus digital thing. I believe it was a moment in time in the COVID, ZERP, massive money going in. We hadn't seen inflation yet. It was all of that happening. And the investor class was basically deciding we're going to look …”
Kalanick warns municipalities may restrict autonomous vehicles like they did scooters
“Guys, like, we should watch for this in the autonomous car space too. Cities may get acute and start doing things like that. And what they did on scooters, they could do on cars.”
Kalanick argues Donald Trump uses the stock market as policy weather vane
“I think this maybe is just the more simple view of things, which is Trump's weather vane is a stock market. Like we see vol is up. We see the VIX is really high, but you know what? The S and P is trading in this band. That's actually fairly tight, given the cr…”
Kalanick: Tesla is the Google of the physical AI era
“They are the Google of this era, which is what I mean by that is in the 2000, if you were doing a startup in the 2000, the first question you would get. Is why isn't Google going to kill you? Or why isn't Google just going to do it? They're not going to know t…”
Kalanick: Waymo leads in autonomy but lacks scale and urgency
“Look, I think Waymo obviously is ahead. The existence proof is there. Their issue is manufacturing and scale and urgency and fierceness.”
Kalanick: Waymo takes 100x more energy to drive than a human
“The Waymo machine takes a hundred times more energy to drive a Waymo than a human does to drive a Waymo.”
Kalanick: In capital-intensive markets, fundraising is a core competency
“In the Uber world early days, if you didn't have capital, it didn't matter how good your app was, because Masa is going to put a billion dollars into your competitor, and you're going to lose 20% market share tomorrow. So a critical competency, in fact, your w…”
Travis Kalanick expects cheaper AI to paradoxically increase total industry revenue
“When AI gets cheap, you know what's going to happen, guys? There's going to be a lot more AI, right? I don't think, I think the price elasticity on this one is actually positive. So as the price goes down, the revenue usage, everything's going to go up.”
Travis Kalanick says mastering copying eventually forces a flip to genuine innovation
“When you get really, really good at copying and that time gets tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter, you eventually run out of things to copy. And then it flips to creativity and innovation.”
Travis Kalanick calculates a $500B surplus using 2019 spending and 2024 revenues
“2009, if we took 2019 spend, right, the year before COVID, and put it up against 20, 24 revenues, five hundred billion dollar surplus.”
Travis Kalanick says all-EV ride-sharing would require doubling California's energy capacity
“If all of the miles in California went EV ride sharing, you would need to double the energy capacity of California.”
Travis Kalanick warns expanding California's grid by 10% will take years
“Even getting 20% more, 10% more is going to be a gargantuan five to 10 year exercise.”
San Francisco Threatened Kalanick With 90 Days in Jail Per Uber Ride
“I got threatened by the city of San Francisco and the state of California three months after we launched Uber with 90 days in jail for every ride that had occurred.”
Uber Gave Cities 30 Days To Enforce Lyft Regulations Before Launching
“Each and every city we went to, we would send, we would wait for Lyft to launch. And then we would basically say to the city, we'd send them a letter saying, there's this really cool thing called ride sharing. This company called Lyft is doing it. We think it'…”
Kalanick: Uber gained market share whenever competitors skipped surge pricing
“Any time we were doing surge pricing and our competitor wasn't, we knew we were gaining market share because somebody could just come to us and get a ride when in the other system they couldn't.”
Kalanick: Distributed AI training fails over distances as short as two kilometers
“Honestly, guys, even if it's on your own fiber connected, like, two kilometers away, you're screwed. It's not a thing.”
Kalanick uses AI agents to autonomously bet on Kalshi and Polymarket
“I've got a side quest where I'm just investing. I have agents investing and betting on Kalshi and Polly and, you know, these other places. And it's silly how dumb the agents are, even their best agents, to be honest.”
Kalanick asserts artificial general intelligence is not here despite industry claims
“It's the AGI is not here, and it's kind of silly for folks, I think, to sort of suggest it is.”
Kalanick: 13% of San Francisco vehicle miles were Uber when he departed
“When I left Uber, 13% of all San Francisco miles were Uber miles.”
Kalanick: Rare earth minerals are constrained by regulation, not physical scarcity
“Yeah, but it's not rare. It's what you have to do to the land is aggressive, and what's rare is the, is, is where the, where are the places they'll let you do it that you can also sort of get people to.”
Kalanick: New venture focuses on specialized food robotics, not humanoids
“Look, I'm in the non-humanoid space. I mean, but mechanical engineers have been dealing with actuators and, you know, all the sort of electro-mechanical sort of interactions that make Machines do certain things, but like, I'm in the food machine space, so I ca…”
Kalanick denies Pony AI deal but admits inbound autonomous vehicle interest
“There's no real deal right now, but there is definitely some inbound.”
Kalanick: Lab37 robotic assembly cuts kitchen labor costs to 7-10% of revenue
“When they're running our machine, it's between seven and 10% of revenue.”
Kalanick: Uber Eats and DoorDash represent only 2% of US meals
“Uber Eats and DoorDash, they represent like 1.8% or two percent of all meals right now.”
Travis Kalanick predicts people will only cook as a hobby
“Look people will cook in the future as a hobby.”
CloudKitchens will roll out automated bowl builders to five customers in April
“We're rolling out with five customers in April that are using the machine”
Travis Kalanick reveals CloudKitchens operates tens of thousands of delivery kitchens globally
“We, of course we have the real estate, so we have kitchens, you know, tens of thousands of kitchens around the world.”
Kalanick: CloudKitchens robotics team was formed with former Uber ATG engineers
“We have a robotics division that, you know, got going with a lot of the original sort of Uber ATG guys, advanced technology group, the autonomy guys.”
Kalanick: CloudKitchens software touches 18% of US online delivery
“We're seeing 18% of all online delivery in the U S as an example our software is touching.”
Kalanick: Average Uber driver worked eight hours weekly during his tenure
“And let's be clear, the average Uber driver during my, you know, let's say at the end of my tenure was eight hours a week.”
Uber Burned $75 Million Per Week During China Battle Peak
“So I think at the peak right before, right as we were negotiating the term sheet, we pushed, we were burning, I think it was. Seventy five million dollars a week.”
Kalanick: Uber turned $1.5 billion into an $8–$9 billion Didi stake
“So we turned a bill and a half into eight or nine. I can't remember the exact math, but it's something like that.”
Kalanick: Physical automation treats manufacturing, real estate, and logistics as computing resources
“CPU manipulates bits. What manipulates atoms? Manufacturing. Storage stores bits. What stores atoms? Real estate. Network moves bits from point A to point B. What moves atoms? That's transportation or logistics. So you have these three core computing resources…”
Kalanick: Adams is inches from closing an acquisition of Pronto
“And we acquired a company on the mining stuff, a company called Pronto. Or it's about to close. It's where we're inches from closing is the way to put it.”
Kalanick: Lab37's food assembly machine produces 300 bowls per hour
“That machine right there does 300 bowls an hour.”
Kalanick: Tesla Hardware 5 will probably launch next year
“Hardware five is coming out on Tesla probably next year, which is going to make a big difference in what FSD can do.”
Travis Kalanick: Autonomous vehicle companies no longer use human data labeling
“You're some of the players in the autonomous software space, autonomous vehicle software space are no longer doing any labeling because the machines are doing it all.”
Travis Kalanick claims US food delivery apps are copying old Chinese features
“A lot of the innovation you will see coming out on Uber Eats or DoorDash Like the stuff that's coming out now is stuff that existed three years ago, four years ago in China, maybe longer.”
Travis Kalanick identifies utility upgrades as the primary commercial construction bottleneck
“In the U.S. And really around the world, utility upgrades is the long pole in the tent in, in construction development.”
Kalanick: CloudKitchens operates facilities across 30 countries
“Currently, I think we have real estate. We have facilities in all the major cities, and 30 countries around the world.”
Kalanick: Hundreds of thousands of restaurants use CloudKitchens software
“We also have a software division, so we have hundreds of thousands of restaurants using our software stack.”
Kalanick: CloudKitchens robots will deploy widely over coming quarters and years
“Have real, you know, robots that are gonna, that already Are out there, but are going to be out there in a really big way over the coming, you know, quarters and years.”