We are thrilled to announce that Atoms, the physical AI company founded by Travis Kalanick, has officially completed its acquisition of Pronto. As of today, Pronto is proud to become the core technology engine of Atoms Mining, one of three divisions within the company dedicated to digitizing the physical world through purpose-built, intelligent machines.
This acquisition marks a massive milestone for our team and for the future of off-road autonomy. Atoms recently brought its full vision into public view after building in stealth for eight years, and joining their organization gives us the engineering depth, infrastructure, and long-term commitment needed to accelerate our mission dramatically.
A New Chapter for Mining Autonomy
Since our founding in 2018, our goal has been to make autonomous haulage practical, affordable, and available to every mining operation. We pioneered a vision-first, OEM-agnostic approach to AHS that delivers faster deployment measured in weeks – not months – lower total cost of ownership, and easier retrofitting of existing fleets.
We have proven this technology at industrial scale. Under our global agreement with Heidelberg Materials, we are deploying our AHS across more than 100 trucks over a dozen global operations. At Heidelberg’s Lake Bridgeport, Texas quarry, our AHS successfully hauled over two million tons in a mixed-fleet environment in under eight months. We are also continuing to power “Komatsu Smart Quarry Autonomous” through our partnership with Komatsu North America.
Through our acquisition of SafeAI last year, we expanded our capabilities to offer the industry’s first and only tiered autonomous haulage portfolio. Spanning from our foundational camera-based AHS Vision to our VLR and VL360 editions (which incorporate lidar and radar for the extreme demands of deep-pit hard rock mining), we offer solutions for the full spectrum of mining operations.
So, what changes now that we are part of Atoms? For our existing customers and partners, it is business as usual – but better. We will continue to serve our current deployments while gaining access to the broader resources and technical talent of an organization that has spent nearly a decade building at the intersection of AI, robotics, manufacturing, and real estate.
Digitizing the Physical World
Atoms is organized around a foundational thesis: that the physical world can be understood, predicted, and improved through intelligent systems, or physical AI. Their mission is to build “atoms-based computers,” where manufacturing serves as processing power, real estate as storage, and transport as the network layer.
This vision extends across three divisions: Atoms Food (building infrastructure and robotics for better food preparation), Atoms Transport (developing foundational wheelbase platforms for logistics), and Atoms Mining, which we now anchor. Everything in our civilization is mined or grown, making this foundational industry the necessary bedrock for building the next generation of progress machines.
What ties all of this together is a shared philosophy of “gainfully employed robots”. We aren’t interested in building humanoid robots for spectacle. We are focused on deploying specialized, purpose-built machines designed for high-cycle industrial environments where they create immediate, measurable value. Atoms believes the greatest returns on physical AI are found in industries where repetitive, dangerous work can be performed more safely and efficiently by intelligent machines.
Mining is the ultimate case study for this thesis. AHS addresses critical industry gaps directly: improving safety by reducing human exposure to hazardous environments, increasing operational throughput, and lowering costs. As the industry faces dual challenges of labor shortages and surging demand for critical minerals, autonomy is no longer optional; it is the essential technology.
Travis Kalanick, Founder & CEO of Atoms, shared his perspective on the acquisition:
“Mining is exactly the kind of massive, physical, essential industry where intelligent machines can make an outsized difference – not someday, but right now. Pronto has already proven that with millions of tons hauled autonomously in commercial operations. What drew us to Pronto is what draws us to every problem at Atoms: the opportunity to build specialized, gainfully employed robots that do real work in the real world. This acquisition is the bedrock of Atoms Mining and a clear signal of how we intend to digitize the physical world one industry at a time, with purpose-built technology that delivers from day one.” how we intend to digitize the physical world — one industry at a time, with purpose-built technology that delivers from day one.”
Anthony Levandowski, CEO & Co-Founder of Pronto, added:
“From the day we founded Pronto, our mission has been to make autonomous haulage practical, affordable, and available to every mining operation, not just the largest ones. Joining Atoms gives us the engineering depth, infrastructure, and long-term commitment to accelerate that mission dramatically. We now have the resources of a polymath organization that thinks about physical AI the way we do: as something that has to work in the real world, on real job sites, every single day. For our customers and partners, this means faster innovation, broader support, and a technology roadmap that extends far beyond what any standalone company could deliver.”
We are ready to digitize the physical world, one massive, essential industry at a time.
Media contact: press@atoms.co
