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Qasar Younis

Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition

Search every verified Qasar Younis interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Qasar Younis, co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, has been promoting the company's new platform, Dana, which he described as designed to let users with basic app development skills build autonomous systems. In a July 2026 appearance on the a16z podcast, he discussed the company's mission to "put intelligence on a billion machines" and argued that physical AI—applied to sectors like manufacturing, mining, and logistics—will have a larger economic impact than digital AI. He also stated that the self-driving industry has moved past technical breakthroughs into an engineering phase focused on cost efficiency. In other recent appearances, Younis has commented on the AI industry's current "opulence" phase, predicting a "pullback" in spending on model training and company costs. He has also highlighted Applied Intuition's financial discipline, claiming the company has never spent the capital it raised, and emphasized the importance of international markets and a "dual-use" strategy that sells commercial products to defense customers. He has said the real impact of AI over the next five to ten years will be in farming, mining, construction, and trucking, and has suggested that public anxiety about AI stems from misunderstanding.

Recent appearances

  • Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | Applied Intuition with a16z

    July 21, 2026 · 📺 a16z

    In this conversation, Marc Andreessen and Erik Torenberg sit down with Applied Intuition cofounders Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig to discuss the emergence of physical AI and the company's latest launch, Dana, a new platform designed to accelerate the development of autonomous systems. Applied Intuition has spent the past decade building the software that powers intelligent machines, from passenger vehicles and trucks to defense systems, mining equipment, and industrial robots. They explore autonomous vehicles, robotics, world models, simulation, AI infrastructure, and the engineering challen…

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  • SemiAnalysis, Altimeter, Nebius, Glean.. 12 Hot Takes From Biggest Names in AI

    July 19, 2026 · 📺 Sourcery with Molly O'Shea

    Day 2 of RAISE Summit in Paris, the biggest AI summit in Europe. 12 founders, operators, and investors give us their hottest takes on the debates splitting the room right now: is token maxing genius or a waste, is open source dying or about to take over, and are we in a bubble. The disagreements are the best part. Dylan Patel (SemiAnalysis) loves token maxing and says open source is dying quickly, while others call token maxing the wrong approach entirely. Qasar Younis (Applied Intuition) on the opulence phase of the cycle and the pullback he sees coming. Apoorv Agrawal (Altimeter) on the fou…

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  • A Rare Look Inside Applied Intuition’s Physical AI Garage

    April 07, 2026 · 📺 Sourcery with Molly O'Shea

    We got rare access inside Applied Intuition’s commercial garage with Co-Founders CEO Qasar Younis and CTO Peter Ludwig, where they’re building AI systems that power cars, trucks, mining equipment, defense systems, and more. In a never-before-seen tour to the public, Applied Intuition showcases where/how real machines across industries are being rebuilt with AI. Valued at $15B, Applied Intuition is one of the most important companies in physical AI, powering 18 of the top 20 global automakers and deploying autonomy across automotive, trucking, construction, agriculture, and defense. Inside t…

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  • How Applied Intuition Reached $15B (Without Spending $1B)

    April 06, 2026 · 📺 Sourcery with Molly O'Shea

    Qasar Younis (CEO) & Peter Ludwig (CTO) of Applied Intuition join Sourcery to break down how they’ve quietly built one of the most important AI companies in the world reaching a $15 billion valuation. Founded in 2017, Applied Intuition is building the infrastructure layer for vehicle intelligence and physical AI, powering systems across automotive, defense, trucking, construction, mining, and agriculture. Today, 18 of the top 20 global automakers and major U.S. Department of Defense programs rely on their software. The company has raised $1B+ in total funding, including a $600M Series F at a…

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  • 1337 H4x0rz Attack Tech, OpenClaude (Leak), Crypto's Quantum Crash

    March 31, 2026 · 📺 TBPN

    00:06:21 AI Is Coming for Your Memes 00:16:16 Axios NPM Package Compromised 00:27:51 Claude Code Source Code Leak 00:39:10 Google: Quantum Threat to Crypto is Real 00:46:50 Timeline Reactions 01:02:31 Alex Pruden, a former Army Green Beret and Stanford graduate, is the CEO and co-founder of Project Eleven, a company dedicated to securing digital assets against emerging quantum computing threats. He discusses the urgency of addressing vulnerabilities in blockchain cryptography, emphasizing that recent advancements in quantum computing have significantly lowered the threshold for potential attac…

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  • The real AI revolution isn’t software. It’s farms, mines, and trucks. | Qasar Younis

    March 08, 2026 · 📺 Lenny's Podcast

    Qasar Younis is the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a $15 billion AI company that adds intelligence to cars, tractors, planes, submarines, and other vehicles—essentially, Tesla or Waymo without the hardware. He was previously COO of Y Combinator, started his career as an engineer at GM and Bosch, and was born on a farm in Pakistan. We discuss: 1. Why the biggest AI revolution will play out in mining, farming, construction, and trucking over the next 5 to 10 years, not in software 2. Why Qasar intentionally stayed under the radar for nearly a decade while building Applied Intuition, a…

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The summary and quote tags on this profile are produced with AI assistance from verified, first-person interview transcripts, then checked by our team to confirm the speaker's identity and the accuracy of every quote. See how we verify →