We stopped working on Atom and started on the foundations of Zed when we realized that we couldn't shape Atom into our vision for the ultimate editor. While we respect and appreciate the innovations brought by Visual Studio Code, we never found ourselves loving it enough to give up on the dream. Ultimately, we think we're going to add the most value to the world by creating something new. It's also a lot more fun.
I get the lack of interest in VS Code, but this does zero to explain why Atom was dropped and why people should put anymore trust into your next editor, without believing it will end up the same way of Atom.