Full-Time
Technician
Posted on 9/27/2025
Pronto
201-500 employees
Autonomous haulage system retrofit for mining
Compensation Overview
$60k - $90k/yr
San Francisco, CA, USA
In Person
 Hardware Engineering (1) |
|---|
- Previous work experience in hardware assembly or fabrication (1-2 years minimum)
- Experience working with fast paced engineering teams and unstructured environments
- Ability to handle many simultaneous projects and tasks
- Willingness and ability to learn new fabrication and assembly techniques
- Must be able to safely lift up to 50lbs and stand for long periods of time
- Good written and verbal communication and computer skills (google suite, excel)
- Action oriented
- Extremely organized
- Mechanically inclined
- Attention to detail
- Assemble custom computers for autonomous vehicles
- Build prototype cable harnesses
- Help run and maintain our 3D printers
- Opportunity to run a PCB assembly line (previous experience not required)
- QC new batches of electrical and mechanical parts
- Load software and firmware onto custom build devices
- Help maintain our shop space, where assembly of production parts happens, keeping the space clean and organized
- Work closely with mechanical and electrical engineering teams to assemble prototypes and final production parts
- Assemble and package kits for shipping to customer sites
- Monitor quality of finished product and alert engineering team to potential assembly or design issues
- Experience with Solidworks or other CAD software is a plus
- Command line or Linux experience a plus
Pronto provides an Autonomous Haulage System that retrofits existing heavy machinery, such as dump trucks, to operate without a driver in mining and quarry environments. The system works by having a human drive a route once to teach the software, after which the vehicle can be managed via a smartphone app using cameras, GPS, and optional sensors like lidar to detect obstacles. Unlike competitors that require expensive new machinery or complex central control rooms, Pronto’s technology is brand-agnostic and can be installed on a fleet's current equipment to lower costs. The company's goal is to improve safety and productivity in the off-road heavy industry by providing an accessible way to automate 24/7 operations.
Company Size
201-500
Company Stage
N/A
Total Funding
N/A
Headquarters
San Francisco, California
Founded
2018
Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Atoms acquisition integrates Pronto into multi-sector robotics platform with manufacturing scale and cross-sector innovation potential.
- Mariana Minerals partnership demonstrates full mine automation integration through MineOS, validating autonomous dispatch without human intervention.
- Komatsu dealer network distribution and Heidelberg Materials 100+ truck Brazil expansion accelerate geographic and channel diversification.
What critics are saying
- Atoms acquisition subordinates mining autonomy to Kalanick's broader robotics platform, deprioritizing Pronto within food and transport divisions.
- Mariana Minerals vertical integration threatens licensing model; customer could bypass Pronto using proprietary MineOS coordination software.
- Vision-only system cannot operate in fog, dust, snow; premium VLR editions create market segmentation favoring competitors with integrated multi-sensor solutions.
What makes Pronto unique
- OEM-agnostic retrofit architecture deployed across mining, quarrying, and construction without full fleet replacement.
- Tiered Pronto Editions portfolio (Vision-Only, VLR, VLR 360) enables phased autonomy deployment matching site-specific operational requirements.
- ASIL D-certified safety framework integrated across product line following SafeAI acquisition, highest industry integrity level.
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Benefits
Health Insurance
Dental Insurance
Vision Insurance
Life Insurance
Disability Insurance
Health Savings Account/Flexible Spending Account
Unlimited Paid Time Off
Flexible Work Hours
Paid Holidays
Paid Parental Leave
Pre-Tax Commuter Benefit Plan
401(k) Company Match
Company Equity
Company News
Exclusive: Mariana Minerals taps Pronto to help automate a copper mine |. There is a lot of attention on domestic manufacturing in the United States these days. But for Turner Caldwell, who spent nearly a decade at Tesla, there's not enough attention on the minerals and metals that sit at the very bottom of the supply chain. It's why he left Tesla and started Mariana Minerals in 2024. The purpose of his startup is to become a modern mining (and refining) operation that is set up for growth, because Caldwell has essentially one goal: bring more refined metal into the ecosystem. To do that, his company is trying to automate almost every aspect of a mining operation imaginable. The latest piece is vehicles. On Thursday, Mariana Minerals announced a partnership with Pronto, a startup that's developed self-driving systems for haulage trucks and other off-road vehicles used at construction and mining sites. It's the first deal that Pronto has struck since being acquired by Atoms, the new robotics venture run by Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick. The acquisition reunites Kalanick with Pronto founder Anthony Levandowski, the former star Google self-driving project engineer and controversial entrepreneur behind Otto, which Uber acquired in 2016. The partnership with Pronto will see autonomous haulage trucks begin operating next week at Copper One, a formerly idled copper mine in Utah that Mariana purchased last year. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. But the partnership is about more than just having autonomous trucks operating onsite, Caldwell told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview. Pronto's autonomy system will be directly integrated into the software Mariana has developed to run operations at the mine, which it calls "MineOS." That will make it possible to autonomously dispatch the trucks and coordinate their routes without a human in the loop, he said. This is part of Caldwell's broader vision for how a mine should be run going forward. It involves multiple operating systems that use reinforcement learning to automate and, eventually, coordinate operations across the entire mine. Techcrunch event San Francisco, CA | October 13-15, 2026 "The big Western mining companies look exactly like Ford and GM before Tesla. They look a lot like NASA before SpaceX. They look a lot like the big defense primes before Anduril," he said. "The rate at which software is up-taken and technology is up-taken into the space is fundamentally set by the operating teams who don't really have incentive to change how they operate, right? If they're able to make their KPIs, you know, the spreadsheets, the walkie talkies, the paper reporting - it works just fine." In Caldwell's view, this limits a mine's output and leaves obvious efficiencies on the table. But he also thinks it's existential. "Because Western mining companies don't build a lot of net new infrastructure, the talent pool hasn't been actively attracted to it, and so the labor force is diminishing," he said. That means mines are going to be stuck trying to do more with less. Caldwell sees Mariana's software-first approach as the solution to this problem. That could be good for Mariana, clearly. But if the approach is successful, it could also benefit other mines. Selling Mariana's coordination software is on the table, especially once it's proven out, Caldwell said. But Caldwell said he was not interested in doing that from the start. The "core business should be selling metal," he said. "The company is the coordination layer. And so, if you're doing that, like, at that point, you might as well go and vertically integrate, and go down into making the metal, instead of just selling software," he said. "I think SpaceX would not be a very large company selling [rocket] re-landing software to NASA." Plus, owning and running the mine is crucial to the reinforcement learning loop, Caldwell said - not just because it allows for better control and higher-fidelity data, but also because it could eventually help inform decisions that are hard for humans to see right now. Caldwell likened this to how AlphaGo, the chess-playing software developed by DeepMind a decade ago, began making moves humans hadn't considered once it had trained on enough data. Despite all this talk of automation, Caldwell said he's not trying to remove humans from mining operations. Like many other founders working in the sector, he believes Mariana will actually expand that already winnowing talent pool. "Part of this is a labor cost reduction, but that's not really the goal," he said. "The goal is actually enabling more productivity with the constrained labor pool that we have. Automation, and autonomy, is going to create more jobs, because we will have more mines that are operating."
Kalanick launches Atoms as robotics platform following eight-year stealth development. March 14, 2026 at 1:49 PM - by MLQ Agent Key points. * Travis Kalanick publicly launched Atoms on March 13, 2026, a robotics company that operated secretly for eight years as City Storage Systems1 * Atoms focuses on specialized industrial robots for food service, mining, and transport sectors rather than humanoid designs13 * Kalanick is folding his ghost kitchen business CloudKitchens into Atoms and preparing to acquire autonomous vehicle startup Pronto14 * The company aims to build a 'wheelbase for robots' platform with specialized machines designed for specific industrial tasks12 * Atoms has thousands of employees and reportedly receives major backing from Uber24 Travis Kalanick, the former Uber CEO, publicly launched Atoms on Friday, a robotics company focused on building specialized industrial machines for food service, mining, and transport sectors. The venture represents a significant expansion of City Storage Systems, a company Kalanick founded in 2016 and operated in stealth mode for eight years, consolidating his CloudKitchens ghost kitchen business into a broader platform for industrial automation13. Company origins and structure. Atoms was previously known as City Storage Systems, a company Kalanick established after departing Uber in 2017 2. The venture operated secretively with thousands of employees who were not permitted to list the company name on LinkedIn 1. Kalanick announced the rebranding and public launch through a 1,600-plus word manifesto on the company's website, stating he had never truly left the entrepreneurial world 1. The new company consolidates multiple business units, including CloudKitchens and Lab37, which is developing a 19-foot-long kitchen robot called the Bowl Builder capable of automating up to 40% of manual food preparation work 2. Focus on specialized rather than humanoid robots. Atoms distinguishes itself by focusing on task-specific industrial robots rather than general-purpose humanoid designs 13. Kalanick described the company's approach as building "gainfully employed robots" with productive jobs that bring value to their owners 1. The company will operate through three divisions: Atoms Food providing infrastructure for the food industry, Atoms Mining focused on increasing mine productivity, and Atoms Transport, which Kalanick describes as a "wheelbase for robots" 3. In a Friday interview, Kalanick explained that while humanoids have their place, there is significant opportunity in specialized robots that operate at industrial scale 14. Pronto acquisition and mining expansion. Kalanick revealed that Atoms is close to acquiring Pronto, an autonomous vehicle startup founded by former Uber colleague Anthony Levandowski 14. Kalanick is already the largest investor in Pronto, which has developed autonomous driving systems for haul trucks used in mining and construction 2. Pronto's technology provides Level 4 autonomy, enabling vehicles to operate without human guidance in limited areas using GPS, cameras, and radar sensors housed in ruggedized cases 2. Workers can control trucks equipped with Pronto's system through a mobile app that allows setting travel routes and tracking operating metrics such as fuel use and payload weight 2. Kalanick indicated that the industrial sector represents Atoms' main focus area 4. Uber connection and backing. The Information reported that Atoms is set to receive major backing from Uber, though Atoms' website makes no explicit mention of the ride-hailing company 24. Kalanick previously served as Uber's co-founder and CEO before resigning in 2017 amid workplace harassment and discrimination issues 4. He left Uber's board in 2019 3. In a rare interview in March 2025, Kalanick expressed regret over Uber's decision to abandon its self-driving vehicle division, which the company sold to autonomous trucking company Aurora in 2020 4. Industrial specificity over general purpose. Kalanick's return to robotics through Atoms reflects a strategic calculation that specialized industrial automation offers more immediate commercial viability than broader consumer-facing robotics. Rather than competing in the crowded humanoid robotics space where companies like Tesla and Boston Dynamics are investing heavily, Atoms targets specific industrial workflows where tasks are repetitive and well-defined. The kitchen robot developed through Lab37 exemplifies this approach - automating 40% of food preparation is a concrete productivity gain in an industry facing labor constraints and rising wage pressures. This specificity reduces the technical challenges of creating general-purpose reasoning systems while addressing genuine market needs. Integration and manufacturing scale. Atoms faces several near-term milestones that will determine its competitive position. The Pronto acquisition represents a crucial test of Kalanick's ability to integrate autonomous vehicle technology into a broader platform strategy. Success here would validate the wheelbase concept, proving that mining haul trucks and food service robots can operate on standardized platforms. The company's three-division structure also suggests plans for cross-pollination, where innovations in mining autonomy could inform transport and logistics applications. However, Atoms must demonstrate manufacturing scale and cost efficiency in each sector to justify the integrated platform approach over specialized competitors. Companies mentioned. Further sources. Written with AI assistance, verified and edited by its team. Questions? Contact MLQ.ai.
Uber founder Travis Kalanick launches robotics company Atoms. March 14, 2026 - 9:13 am The Uber founder re-emerges with Atoms, a stealth robotics venture that quietly employed thousands before going public, and a philosophy about 'gainfully employed robots' that sounds a lot like Uber, but for warehouses. For eight years, Travis Kalanick ran a company whose thousands of employees were not allowed to list their employer publicly. On March 13, 2026, he was ready to stop hiding it. The company is called Atoms. It builds specialised industrial robots for food service, mining, and transport. And it has been doing so, quietly, since roughly 2017, long before the current wave of excitement about physical AI and humanoid machines. Atoms is the rebranded version of City Storage Systems, the holding company Kalanick founded after leaving Uber in 2017. Its most visible subsidiary, CloudKitchens, the ghost kitchen operator that signed leases on commercial cooking spaces and rented them to food delivery brands, is being folded into Atoms as the parent company shifts its emphasis from food infrastructure to robotics platform. The wheelbase for robots. The | of EU tech Kalanick's core product thesis is what he calls a "wheelbase for robots": a standardised mobility platform consisting of a common chassis equipped with power, compute, and sensors, which can then be outfitted for specific industrial tasks. The analogy he draws is to the automotive industry, where a single platform underpins multiple vehicle variants. Atoms wants to do the same for task-specific wheeled machines. The pitch is deliberately anti-humanoid. While much of the robotics industry's current attention has coalesced around bipedal machines, Boston Dynamics, Figure, 1X, and others, Kalanick is betting on what he calls "gainfully employed robots": purpose-built, wheeled systems designed for high-cycle industrial environments where consistency and durability matter more than general dexterity. To extend that platform into mining and autonomous transport, Atoms is on the verge of acquiring Pronto, the autonomous vehicle startup founded by Anthony Levandowski, the former Google and Uber engineer. Kalanick confirmed he is already Pronto's largest investor. Eight years of silence. The stealth period is the most striking element of the Atoms story. Ghost kitchens were a visible business, CloudKitchens' properties appeared in cities across the US and internationally, and the company raised substantial capital. But the parent entity and its broader robotics ambitions were systematically obscured from the public record, employees included. Kalanick has said little publicly about why. The most plausible explanation is competitive: a long development runway in a capital-intensive hardware sector requires protection from the attention of better-resourced rivals. Whether eight years of stealth have produced a product that can compete with the robotics programmes of Amazon, Tesla, and a dozen well-funded startups is what the next chapter of Atoms will have to prove. Kalanick knows how to build companies that move fast and get very large. He also knows, better than most, how quickly a founder's conviction about the future can collide with the present. Atoms is, at its core, a bet that the physical world is about to be digitised at industrial scale, and that the company best positioned to build the platform for that transition started quietly, in 2017, in a business that looked like kitchens.
Autonomous & self-driving vehicle news: Tesla, Waymo, US Senate, Teamsters & Pronto.ai. In autonomous and self-driving vehicle news are Tesla, Waymo, US Senate, Teamsters andPronto.ai. Senate hearing on self-driving cars. Executives from Tesla and Waymo appeared before the Senate Commerce Committee this week to defend the safety of autonomous vehicle (AV) technology and urge Congress to enact a modern federal regulatory framework for self-driving vehicles. Lawmakers from both parties acknowledged the potential benefits of AVs - such as reduced traffic fatalities and enhanced mobility - but also pressed the companies on safety lapses and gaps in oversight. Tesla's vice president of vehicle engineering emphasized that AVs could dramatically reduce the roughly 40,000 annual U.S. traffic deaths by eliminating human error and argued that outdated regulations are slowing innovation. Waymo's chief safety officer highlighted data showing its autonomous systems have lower serious-crash rates than human drivers and stressed the need for legislation to maintain U.S. leadership amid global competition. At the same time, several senators voiced sharp safety concerns, citing incidents such as robotaxis failing to stop for school buses and questions about remote operator practices. Some lawmakers and safety advocates argued that companies have deployed technology without adequate guardrails, calling for stronger oversight, clearer liability rules and independent safety verification. Waymo faces ongoing scrutiny on school bus safety. Waymo's robotaxi fleet continues to draw regulatory and public concern after repeated incidents in which its autonomous vehicles failed to stop for school buses with active stop arms, despite software updates intended to address the problem. School officials in Austin, Texas, have reported multiple violations, prompting investigations by federal safety agencies including NHTSA and the NTSB. Local leaders have urged Waymo to limit operations near school bus loading zones, while similar concerns have surfaced in other cities. The issue has fueled broader debates in Congress and among safety advocates about the readiness of autonomous driving systems to handle common but high-risk scenarios involving children and school zones. Although Waymo maintains that it is improving its technology and points to an overall safety record it says surpasses human drivers, the recurring school bus incidents underscore the unresolved technical and regulatory challenges facing large-scale autonomous vehicle deployment. Teamsters urge California regulators to suspend Waymo operations. Teamsters California is calling on the California Public Utilities Commission to indefinitely suspend Waymo's operating license following a National Highway Traffic Safety Administration investigation into a robotaxi that struck a small child. Union leaders argue the incident underscores longstanding safety concerns surrounding autonomous vehicles, particularly near schools, and accuse Waymo of ignoring warnings and prior investigations, including issues involving school bus stop signs. Framing the issue as both a public safety and labor crisis, the Teamsters say robotaxis threaten jobs, community well-being, and now child safety, urging regulators to intervene before a more serious incident occurs. TIER IV Chosen for Japanese Defense Study on Autonomous Vehicles at SDF Facilities Pronto expands AHS portfolio with physics-first tiered architecture. Pronto.ai, Inc. has announced the launch of Pronto Editions, introducing a tiered autonomous haulage system (AHS) architecture tailored to diverse mining scales. The expanded portfolio introduces Pronto AHS VLR and VLR 360 editions, which integrate lidar and radar sensing to complement the company's existing vision-only flagship system. This strategic expansion aims to address the varied operational design domains (ODD) of the global mining industry, ranging from aggregate quarries to ultra-class deep-pit operations. The move follows a milestone at Heidelberg Materials' Lake Bridgeport quarry, where Pronto's vision-only system moved over two million tons of material in under eight months. While the vision-only edition remains the primary solution for regional quarries due to lower total cost of ownership and retrofit simplicity, the new VLR editions target the kinetic demands of 400-ton haulers. These systems utilize sensor fusion to ensure fail-operational performance in zero-visibility conditions such as dense fog, dust, and snow, where optical-only systems may face limitations. The Pronto AHS VLR edition combines camera semantics with long-range lidar and radar for weather-penetrating capabilities. The premium VLR 360 edition provides a full 360-degree digitized perimeter for complex maneuvering in congested, mixed-traffic zones. CEO Anthony Levandowski characterized the portfolio expansion as a physics-first approach to autonomy, utilizing active sensing specifically where mission-critical uptime and extreme stopping distances dictate requirements beyond the capabilities of vision-centric systems.
Pronto tiered AHS portfolio: deployment and capex implications for mine fleets. February 5, 2026 | 30 second briefing. Pronto.ai has launched Pronto AHS VLR and Pronto AHS VLR 360, extending its OEM-agnostic autonomous haulage portfolio beyond the existing Vision-Only system into a three-tier "Pronto Editions" architecture. The new VLR variants are aimed at variable labour and resource environments, offering different sensor and compute configurations to match site constraints rather than a single fixed-spec AHS package. For mine operators, this tiered approach allows phased autonomy deployment across mixed fleets and pit conditions, potentially lowering upfront capex and easing integration with legacy haul trucks. Technical brief. * Sensor and compute hardware are modularised, allowing site-specific scaling without redesigning the control algorithms. * Common architecture is intended to support both manned-assist modes and fully driverless haul cycles. * Tiered editions are structured to accommodate varying site communications bandwidth and edge-compute availability. * Architecture is framed for global deployment, addressing differing regulatory and labour-availability regimes across jurisdictions. Our take. Within the 921 Mining stories in our database, there are relatively few product-focused pieces on autonomous haulage systems, so Pronto.ai, Inc's 'Pronto Editions' portfolio signals newer, smaller AHS vendors starting to feature alongside the established OEMs. Because this item is tagged as both Projects and Product, Pronto Editions is likely being framed not just as software, but as something that can be slotted into live mine projects, which tends to appeal to mid-tier operators looking for retrofit AHS options rather than full fleet replacement. International Mining's presence in the company list suggests this launch is being positioned through specialist trade media, which is typically how emerging AHS providers first gain traction with engineering teams and project decision-makers before wider commercial roll-out. Geotechnical software for modern teams. No credit card required. * Save and export unlimited calculations * Advanced data visualisation * Generate professional PDF reports * Cloud storage for all your projects Prepared by collating external sources, AI-assisted tools, and Geomechanics.io's proprietary mining database, then reviewed for technical accuracy & edited by our geotechnical team.