Travis Kalanick, the 43-year-old co-founder of Uber, will resign from the company’s board of directors effective December 31, 2019. He announced his departure on December 24, 2019, marking the end of his formal association with the ride-hailing giant he helped create a decade ago. The company, now publicly traded with a valuation near $50 billion, will lose its last direct link to its founding.
Kalanick’s exit represents the culmination of a gradual separation that began after his ouster as chief executive in June 2017. Since Uber’s initial public offering in May 2019, he has been steadily selling his shares. Securities and Exchange Commission filings show that by early November, Kalanick had sold more than 90 percent of his stake, generating approximately $2.5 billion. His voting power dropped from about 16 percent at the time of the IPO to less than one percent.
The board resignation formalizes what the stock sales already indicated: Kalanick is moving on from Uber. He plans to focus on CloudKitchens, a venture that rents commercial kitchen space to restaurants that prepare food exclusively for delivery. He also intends to devote attention to a personal investment fund he established in 2018.
The company’s origins trace back to 2008, when Kalanick and co-founder Garrett Camp struggled to find a taxi during a snowy night in Paris. They launched UberCab the following year from a small office above a San Francisco bakery. Initially a black-car network, it evolved into the ride-hailing platform that operated in more than 600 cities and completed over 40 million weekly trips by the time Kalanick left the CEO role.
Kalanick’s tenure as chief executive was marked by rapid expansion but also by scandals that led to investor pressure for his removal. The company’s aggressive culture, which Kalanick embodied, became a liability. After stepping down as CEO, he remained on the board, a presence that complicated efforts by new CEO Dara Khosrowshahi to rebuild the company’s reputation and steer it toward profitability.
In a statement emailed on December 24, Kalanick said: “Uber has been a part of my life for the past 10 years. At the close of the decade, and with the company now public, it seems like the right moment for me to focus on my current business and philanthropic pursuits.”
His departure removes a lingering distraction for Uber’s leadership. It also severs the last formal connection to the company’s founding era, leaving Uber fully under professional management and public shareholders. Kalanick leaves behind a legacy of transforming urban transportation, complicated by the same intensity that drove Uber’s growth. His new venture, CloudKitchens, will test whether he can replicate that success without the accompanying chaos.
