Travis Atkins

Introduction

Travis Atkins, who works in strategy and operations at the New York AI company EliseAI and is based in Brooklyn, sent Australian commentator Drew Pavlou a direct message in which he said he had been stalking him and asked which knife — “green or black” — he was deciding to cut him up with. On October 14, 2026, Pavlou, who has roughly 286,000 followers on X, posted a screenshot of the message, which had come from a TikTok account named “Trav,” and asked his audience to help identify the owner. Within hours the community had identified the sender, and that evening Pavlou posted a screenshot of Atkins’s LinkedIn profile showing the same message sent as a LinkedIn direct message, and asked people to contact Elise AI about “their employee sending me death threats.”

Background Information

Drew Pavlou is an Australian commentator based in Brisbane. His X profile, as displayed on the posts in question, describes him as a “Western civilisation enjoyer. Patriot. Adventurer. Anti-communist counter-revolutionary,” and his account has roughly 286,000 followers.

EliseAI is a machine learning technology company based in New York City that builds conversational artificial intelligence for the housing and healthcare industries. Its website states that the company has raised $350 million at a $4 billion valuation. Atkins’s LinkedIn headline, per the screenshot Pavlou posted, reads “Strategy & Operations | AI Strategy @ EliseAi,” with his location listed as Brooklyn, New York, United States.

The Controversy or Incident That Led to Their Cancellation

Death threat and self-described stalking; no charges filed. Atkins’s message to Pavlou says, in his own words, “i’ve been stalking you” and ends “deciding which Knife to cut you up with. thankfully you don’t have security.” No charges have been filed and no court has adjudicated the matter; the record consists of the messages and Pavlou’s posts.

At 8:01 a.m. UTC on October 14, 2026, Pavlou posted a screenshot of a TikTok message from an account named “Trav” (@gushygel) and asked for help identifying the owner:

“hey! i’ve been stalking you. gonna make a move soon. do you like green or black? deciding which Knife to cut you up with. thankfully you don’t have security. loveee that.”

The screenshot timestamped the message at 10:15 a.m. The post drew 249,507 views and 2,745 likes within hours.

At 12:24 a.m. UTC on October 15, Pavlou posted an update identifying the sender, accompanied by a screenshot of a LinkedIn profile reading “Travis Atkins,” “Strategy & Operations | AI Strategy @ EliseAi” and “Brooklyn, New York, United States”: “Update: We found Trav! Please contact Elise AI to ask them what they think of their employee sending me death threats! Thanks Travis!” The LinkedIn screenshot showed the same message sent to Pavlou as a LinkedIn direct message, timestamped 10:15 a.m. The post drew 92,359 views and 3,550 likes. Five minutes later Pavlou added in the thread: “This is the guy who told me that he was stalking me and would kill me.”

When a commenter asked in the thread, “What’s the evidence linking him?”, Grok, X’s AI assistant, replied that the public evidence was the TikTok account named Trav that sent the stalking/death threat messages, “identified as Travis Atkins via matching photos on his EliseAI LinkedIn (buzzcut, beard, cat tattoo) and other social media images shown in the posts.”

Public Reaction and Consequences

The thread drew broad reaction. CharlieRapCity asked, “What the actual fk?!? Isn’t this a felony?” (311 likes); multiple users urged Pavlou to involve the police, including one who wrote “Drew go to the police! Cybercrime! Please stay safe” (80 likes), and others commented that he should not walk around without security. Some doubted the identification or the account’s motives, with one reply suggesting the message was “Just trying to scare you probably.” As of the time of writing, neither Atkins nor EliseAI has posted a public statement in the thread.

Current Status

No charges have been filed in the retrieved record, no police report is mentioned in the thread, and EliseAI has not publicly responded to Pavlou’s request that people contact the company. As of the screenshots Pavlou posted, Atkins’s LinkedIn profile still listed his role at EliseAI and his Brooklyn location. The matter is unadjudicated; the documented record consists of the two direct messages, the LinkedIn and TikTok screenshots, and Pavlou’s posts identifying the sender.

Impact on Their Career/Life

As of the time of writing there is no reported consequence: Atkins remains publicly listed as an EliseAI employee, and the company has not commented. The exchange, however, began as a private direct message to a public figure with hundreds of thousands of followers and ended up public — a death threat that his own message framed as foreknowledge (“thankfully you don’t have security”) is now a matter of public record, and Pavlou has asked his audience to press Elise AI about it.

Sources

X (@DrewPavlou), “Please let me know if you can help identify the owner of this TikTok account,” Oct 14, 2026 — source
X (@DrewPavlou), “Update: We found Trav! Please contact Elise AI to ask them what they think of their employee sending me death threats! Thanks Travis!,” Oct 15, 2026 — source
X (@DrewPavlou), “This is the guy who told me that he was stalking me and would kill me,” Oct 15, 2026 — source
X (@meaningoflights), “What’s the evidence linking him?,” Oct 15, 2026 — source
X (@grok), “Public evidence is the TikTok account named Trav…,” Oct 15, 2026 — source
EliseAI, company homepage (accessed Oct 15, 2026) — source