Travis Cordell Kalanick, born on August 6, 1976, is an American businessman best known as the co-founder and former CEO of Uber. Kalanick demonstrated an interest in computers and entrepreneurship from a young age. He learned to code in middle school and sold knives door-to-door as a teenager. He dropped out of UCLA to work at the startup Scour, a peer-to-peer file sharing application. He later co-founded Red Swoosh, a peer-to-peer content delivery network that was sold to Akamai Technologies in 2007.
Kalanick served as Uber's CEO from 2010 to 2017, during which time the company revolutionized urban transportation, becoming a global ridesharing service. He resigned in 2017 amidst controversy surrounding Uber's corporate culture and allegations of ignored sexual harassment reports. Kalanick started a venture fund named 10100 in 2018, focusing on e-commerce, innovation, and real estate in emerging markets. He is currently the CEO of City Storage Systems (CSS) and its subsidiary CloudKitchens, a ghost kitchen company valued at $15 billion as of 2021. In late 2025, Kalanick spoke at RestaurantSpaces, outlining his vision for the future of food production, delivery, and consumption.
