Travis Kalanick

Travis Kalanick
Kalanick seated onstage
Kalanick in 2016
Born (1976-08-06) August 6, 1976 (age 47)
EducationUniversity of California, Los Angeles (dropped out)
OccupationInternet entrepreneur
Known forCo-founder of Red Swoosh
Co-founder of Uber
TitleCEO of City Storage Systems
RelativesAllisyn Ashley Arm (half-niece)

Travis Cordell Kalanick (/ˈkælənɪk/; born August 6, 1976) is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former chief executive officer (CEO) of Uber. Previously he worked for Scour, a peer-to-peer file sharing application company, and was the co-founder of Red Swoosh, a peer-to-peer content delivery network that was sold to Akamai Technologies in 2007.

Kalanick was CEO of Uber from 2010 to 2017. He resigned from Uber in 2017, after growing pressure resulting from public reports of the company's unethical corporate culture, including allegations that he ignored reports of sexual harassment at the company. Kalanick retained his seat on the board of directors until he resigned the seat on December 31, 2019. In the weeks leading up to the resignation, Kalanick sold off approximately 90% of his shares in Uber, for a profit of about $2.5 billion. Following the sale, in 2017, Kalanick was ranked 238th on the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, with a net worth of $2.6 billion.[1]

In 2018, Kalanick started a venture fund named 10100, intended to invest in e-commerce, innovation and real estate in emerging markets like China and India. That same year, Kalanick announced an investment of nearly $150 million in real estate redevelopment company City Storage Systems; he also announced that he would be its CEO.[2] The company operates a ghost kitchen startup under the name CloudKitchens, which was valued at $15 billion as of 2021.

  1. ^ "Forbes: Travis Kalanick". Forbes. Archived from the original on July 30, 2017. Retrieved July 25, 2017.
  2. ^ Canales, Katie. "Ousted Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick has reportedly spent $130 million on his ghost kitchen startup. Here's what it's like inside one of the secretive locations". Business Insider. Retrieved August 22, 2022.