Travis Kalanick Net Worth: How the Ex-Uber CEO Built and Grew His Empire!

Travis Kalanick is an American businessperson who’s most famous for starting and running Uber, a big ride-hailing company that changed how we get around.
He’s also the boss of City Storage Systems, a company that fixes up old buildings, and he created CloudKitchens, a company that rents kitchens to people who make food for deliveries.
In this article, we’ll learn about Travis Kalanick’s life and career, from when he started as a computer engineer to when he became a super-rich businessperson. We’ll also find out what he’s working on now and how much money he has in 2023.
Travis Kalanick’s Early Life and Career
Travis Kalanick was born on August 6, 1976, in Los Angeles, California. He went to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and studied computer engineering.
In 1998, he left UCLA to start his first business, Scour. It was a website for sharing files, but it got into trouble for copyright issues with movie and music groups.
After that, Kalanick helped start another file-sharing company called RedSwoosh. It got bought by Akamai Technologies in 2007 for $19 million.
In 2009, he teamed up with a Canadian entrepreneur named Garrett Camp to create UberCab. This was a phone app that linked people who needed rides with drivers of fancy cars.
Later on, the company changed its name to Uber and added more ways to get around, like bikes, scooters, helicopters, and cars that can drive themselves.
Uber Controversies and Departure
Uber grew really fast and became one of the most valuable new companies in the world. But the person in charge, Kalanick, had a lot of problems. These problems made both him and the company look bad. Here are some of the issues:
- People said there was sexual harassment and unfair treatment of some workers in the company.
- They were accused of taking ideas from Google’s self-driving car project, Waymo.
- They got sued by drivers, people who make rules, and other companies. The reasons were about how workers were treated, how safe things were, and how fair they were.
- There was a video that got really popular. It showed Kalanick arguing with an Uber driver about how much to pay.
- Many people stopped using Uber because they thought the company supported President Trump’s rule about travel.
In June 2017, because of pressure from people who invest in the company and others who help make decisions, Kalanick quit being the CEO of Uber. He stayed on the group that makes big decisions until December 2019. Then, he sold all his part of the company for more than $2.5 billion.
Travis Kalanick Net Worth and Current Ventures
According to Forbes, as of October 2023, Kalanick is worth $3.57 billion.
This makes him one of the wealthiest businesspeople in the world. He has homes in New York and Los Angeles, and he owns a private airplane. Right now, he’s not in a relationship after breaking up with his girlfriend Daniela Lopez Osorio in 2021.
After leaving Uber, Kalanick started a new fund called 10100. This fund invests in companies that help create jobs and opportunities for people who need them.
One of his big investments is in a company called CloudKitchens. It’s a global virtual restaurant business that got funding from Microsoft and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund. CloudKitchens works in many countries like the US, UK, India, China, and Brazil.
Kalanick is also the CEO of a company called City Storage Systems. They fix up buildings that need help, like parking lots, warehouses, and stores. He bought this company in 2018 for $150 million with his own money.
How Travis Kalanick Spends His Wealth?
Travis Kalanick doesn’t talk much about his personal life. It seems like he uses most of his money for traveling and buying houses. There’s no public information about any big donations he’s made.
A news source called Business Insider recently said that even though he’s a billionaire, he doesn’t have a lot of cash available. This year, he started a company called CloudKitchens and spent $130 million to make it happen.
When it comes to houses, Kalanick likes fancy ones. In 2019, he bought a really expensive penthouse in New York for $36.9 million. It had a pool and a deck on the roof and was the priciest home sold in New York in August of that year.
The next year, he bought a seven-bedroom house in Los Angeles for a whopping $43.3 million.
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