20% more gold per year from automation
Kalanick says Pronto's autonomous mining technology can deliver 20% more gold output per year for a mine — and no customer has said no to that offer.
Snapshot · The a16z Show
Building the Physical AI Stack | Travis Kalanick on TBPN
Explore episode
Jul 23, 2026
Where this was said
Go-to-Market in Mining: The Amazon and Iraq-Saudi Border
At 10:37 · chapter starts 7:10
One of the hosts asks how Atoms sells into the mining industry, and Kalanick's answer is immediate: 'It's the frickin' best.' He explains that enterprise mining go-to-market is an entirely different animal from consumer playbooks — there are no viral growth loops or city launch stunts. Instead, Kalanick personally flies to the most remote mines on earth. He describes dropping into the deep Amazon in northern Brazil, landing at tiny airports on what felt like 'a tarmac in the DMZ,' to visit Vale, the world's largest iron ore mining company and an existing Atoms customer. From there, he flew straight to the Iraq-Saudi border, where GPS jamming forced his pilots to land old-school, visual-only. The anecdote captures both the extreme geography of the mining market and the personal, relationship-driven nature of enterprise sales in a capital-intensive industry.
Go-to-Market in the Amazon and Iraq
Kalanick's enterprise mining go-to-market is nothing like consumer playbooks. He personally flew into remote mines in deep northern Brazil and on the Iraq-Saudi border — where GPS was jammed and pilots had to land visually — to meet customers like Vale, the world's largest iron ore mine operator.
Pronto passed human productivity level
Atoms' Pronto mining autonomy system has surpassed human-level productivity, the key milestone that makes scaling customer deployments easier.
Pronto Has Beaten Human Productivity
Pronto's autonomous mining technology has now surpassed human-level productivity. That milestone changes everything: once you can promise a gold mine CEO 20% more gold per year, and nobody has said no, the enterprise pilot-to-scale flywheel starts spinning on its own.
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