Uber says Travis Kalanick, its former CEO, will step down from the company's board of directors effective Dec. 31; Kalanick has sold all of his stock in Uber
- Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick is leaving the board effective Dec. 31. — Kalanick was ousted as CEO in 2017 but remained a director.
CNBCAnnie Palmer
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a chapter that opened in June 2017, when Kalanick [[a:919932|resigned as Uber CEO under pressure from Benchmark, First Round, Lowercase, Menlo and Fidelity]] but kept his board seat through the board's vote on the Holder report recommendations. He stayed a director for another two and a half years while Uber went public without him at the helm.
The exit now is total: he leaves the board effective Dec. 31 and has sold every share, meaning Uber loses both its co-founder's voice in the boardroom and any alignment-of-interest argument for keeping him there.
First-order effects
Uber's board loses its last founder-director, leaving governance entirely in the hands of the institutional investors who forced him out in 2017.
Kalanick ends his financial exposure to Uber entirely — no seat, no stock — so he no longer benefits from or answers for the company's post-IPO performance.
Second-order effects
The standing tension between Kalanick and the investor coalition that ousted him dissolves rather than escalates, removing a recurring source of boardroom friction ahead of future strategic decisions.
His capital and attention shift fully to his own ventures — the CloudKitchens parent renamed Atoms, plus reportedly discussed moves into self-driving such as a possible Pronto.ai acquisition — making him a potential competitor or partner to Uber rather than an insider.
Third-order effects
If the pattern holds, founder-versus-investor standoffs at high-growth companies increasingly resolve through complete separation — CEO first, then board seat, then equity — rather than negotiated coexistence.
It reinforces the investor-coalition model of governance enforcement: a coordinated group of VCs can remove a founder from the top job and, years later, from the board itself.
The trend: Founder-led tech companies are completing investor-driven governance resets by cutting founders out entirely — board seat and equity included — years after the original CEO ouster.
Prediction: CSS (CloudKitchens) will eventually buy an Uber Eats competitor (perhaps take one private post-IPO or go public itself via reverse merger) and vertically integrate, drastically improving unit economics and building the first truly sustainable business of its kind. htt…
Mr. Kalanick has sold out his entire position in Uber over the past two months, according to his spokeswoman, netting over $2.7 billion. https://www.wsj.com/...
In 10 years we'll look back on this as an epic f u power move from Travis. CloudKitchens may very well eat UberEats [ +20% of Uber 'gross bookings'] and then keep going... https://www.wsj.com/...
Kalanick severs all ties with Uber, departing board and selling his last shares. He should put the cash in S&P index fund and call it a day, obvi. https://www.cnbc.com/...
Truly the end of Travis - confirms he is leaving Uber's board, and has cashed out more than $2.5bn. Says he'll be cheering from the sidelines. https://www.ft.com/...
Current CEO Dara Khosrowshahi: “Very few entrepreneurs have built something as profound as Travis Kalanick did with Uber. I'm enormously grateful for Travis' vision and tenacity while building Uber...” https://www.axios.com/...
Also I do not get the VC bets on “cloud” kitchens that Kalanick (and many others) are working on now. If feels like WeWork for restaurants, but I am prepared to be convinced otherwise.
shoutout to all the VCs who said that “travis is uber” back when he spent all the money and then got booted as its growth curve came down, handing Dara the bag
Travis Kalanick to depart Uber board of directors 👀 Has sold nearly all of his stake in the company since lock-up expired in Nov h/t @dee_bosa https://www.cnbc.com/...
I'll give Uber (and Kalanick) credit for stage managing his exit gracefully. I suspect it was far messier than it looks from the outside. https://investor.uber.com/...