99% of Autonomy’s Impact Is Still Ahead of Us

Executive Summary

In this episode of The Road to Autonomy Podcast, Grayson Brulte sits down with Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig of Applied Intuition, the company he calls the most interesting in autonomy. During their conversation, they discuss Applied Intuition’s major new developments, including a landmark partnership with Komatsu and the launch of their Self-Driving System (SDS), an end-to-end Level 2 ADAS solution.

Qasar and Peter explain how their multi-vertical strategy, spanning automotive, mining, and defense, allows them to de-risk development and create more cost-effective, robust systems for their OEM partners. The conversation also explores the critical “build vs. buy” decision facing automakers and how partnerships with Applied Intuition offer a path for OEMS to compete with the rapid software advancements that Tesla is making on a seemingly daily basis.

Key The Road to Autonomy Episode Questions Answered

Key The Road to Autonomy Topics & Timestamps

[00:00] The 99% Horizon: Applied Intuition on the Future of Autonomy

The conversation opens with Applied Intuition’s leadership, Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig, framing the current state of the industry by stating that in 2025, autonomy has barely reached 1% of its potential impact. In response to praise about their major deal with Komatsu and being called the “most interesting company in autonomy” , they emphasize that their ambitions are focused on the future, believing that 99% of the opportunity still lies ahead. This perspective underscores their view that despite recent successes, they are not resting on their laurels and are focused on the vast potential yet to be realized.

[01:54] Introducing the New Self-Driving System (SDS) for Automotive ADAS

Applied Intuition’s new Self-Driving System (SDS) is an end-to-end solution for Level 2 Advanced Driving Assist Systems (ADAS). Peter Ludwig explains that this product has been a long-term investment, building upon nearly a decade of the company’s work in the autonomy space. He confirms it is a significant investment that Applied Intuition intends to take into production.

[02:44] Market Drivers: Why Commercialize SDS Now?

The decision to commercialize Self-Driving System (SDS) was driven by long-term strategic insights rather than recent market announcements. Key factors included being impressed by the ADAS systems already in production in China and seeing a market opportunity due to geopolitical tensions that might prevent those systems from expanding globally. The team was also positively inspired by the performance of Tesla’s FSD, considering its compute and sensor suite. Ultimately, the move reflects the company’s “product first” culture and its ambition to create the best possible version of the product.

[05:00] A Customer-First Strategy and Building Products for Long-Term Success

Applied Intuition’s strategy is centered on ensuring their customers can win and have amazing products. Their systems, including Self-Driving System (SDS), are designed to be adaptable to a customer’s specific needs, whether it’s for a giant Komatsu mining hauler or a passenger car. A primary concern for global OEMs is finding a partner for the long haul, and Applied Intuition has structured its business to isolate those risks and be a stable, long-term partner.

[07:05] How Applied Intuition De-Risks Its Business Through Diversification and First-Principles Thinking

The company’s core philosophy is to prevent problems rather than just solve them by focusing on engineering applications over pure research. They de-risk their business by distributing the high costs of developing tools and data infrastructure across multiple verticals, including defense and mining. This diversification allows them to bring a fundamentally cheaper system to the automotive market. They also maintain several technical architectures in parallel, which allows them to incorporate performance improvements into a master architecture, further de-risking the technical development.

[12:12] Comparing the Komatsu Mining Deal with the Isuzu On-Road Trucking Partnership

While both partnerships are with large Japanese companies, their applications are very different. The Komatsu deal focuses on off-road mining autonomy, whereas the Isuzu relationship is for on-road L4 trucking. Despite these differences, both initiatives leverage a lot of the same underlying infrastructure and products from Applied Intuition.

[14:00] The Science of Developing Software for Different Vehicle Sizes and Environments

Developing software for vastly different vehicles is possible because the underlying math and infrastructure are often very similar. Peter Ludwig notes that recent breakthroughs with large models like transformers have made autonomy stacks more agnostic to specific sensor types and positioning. This technological shift means that a single team can now reasonably develop systems for both cars and trucks, an approach that would have required separate teams just five to seven years ago.

[18:20] Key Breakthroughs in AI and Software Architecture Accelerating Development

The company’s acceleration is attributed to “a thousand little things” rather than a single breakthrough. This includes leveraging modern AI tools to boost engineering productivity, a shift toward “end-to-end” software architectures, and a multi-domain business model. This business model allows investments in one vertical, such as the Komatsu mining deal, to directly benefit and help fund development in other areas, like their automotive SDS product.

[21:49] Understanding the Role of Applied Intuition’s Vehicle OS

The Vehicle OS is a core part of the company’s strategy, encompassing the entire embedded software stack from bootloaders to the user interface. While the SDS uses many components from the Vehicle OS, it is offered in a modular fashion. This allows an OEM to license only the specific modules needed for SDS without having to adopt the entire operating system, providing critical flexibility.

[25:00] What Are OEM Customers Demanding for L2/L2+ Systems?

Qasar Younis explains that the automotive industry is currently trending more toward a “buy” (licensing) model for software than it has in the past five years. This shift is influenced by the advancements from Tesla, impressive systems in China, and new AI technologies. While OEMs might still build in-house, they are less emotional about it and are focused on cost and strategic value. Applied Intuition’s long-term strategy is to position itself as the go-to partner by offering a reliable, sensor-agnostic, and silicon-agnostic system at an efficient price.

[35:00] How SDS is Updated, Maintained, and the Path to L4

System updates are a core part of the technical strategy, using components from the Vehicle OS designed for high reliability. Modern automotive software systems are described as “living organisms” that require ongoing maintenance, security patches, and functionality updates, much like a smartphone or laptop. This continuous improvement model is compared to Google Chrome, where quiet, frequent background updates are central to the product’s success.

[39:00] Can Traditional OEMs Keep Pace with Tesla’s Software Advancements?

The most direct way for traditional OEMs to keep up is through partnerships with companies like Applied Intuition. Qasar Younis argues that “legacy” OEMs possess powerful assets like globally recognized brands, distribution networks, and customer trust. By partnering on software, they can leverage their strengths to compete effectively. He also notes that Tesla is now a more “approachable competitor” after losing market share, which may inspire traditional automakers.

[44:00] Is Software the Defining Factor for a Brand’s Future?

Software is viewed as just one part of a larger whole. A brand is a “collection of experiences,” and while software and autonomy are increasingly important, they do not replace traditional factors. Customers still value the complete product, including mechanical systems, charging experience, fit and finish, and the feel of a door closing.

[50:00] Career Opportunities: Applied Intuition is Hiring

Applied Intuition is hiring “more than ever”. The company is actively seeking engineers with experience in data engineering, data infrastructure, and AI, as well as individuals interested in working on US defense projects. The appeal of joining the company is the unique opportunity to work on a diverse range of complex systems, from sports cars and fighter jets to large-scale Komatsu dirt movers

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Qasar, Peter, great to have you on. Last time you were on, I publicly declared you and I stand by that. To this day, the most interesting company. Autonomy and just so I didn’t think things were any more interesting. You cut a major deal with Komatsu and then you announced a software system for autonomous driving. I gotta tell you guys, I’m sticking with a call to the most interesting company autonomy, but I gotta ask you what the heck is next.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Grayson. Well, the, then great to come back on and thanks for having us on. Um, you know, I’m extremely flattered when you say that, but uh, it’s also a little, uh, nerve wracking, I would say. ’cause now, now we have to somehow stay interested in it to live up to these expectations. Yeah. Yeah. We, we, we. You can just look at our clothes. We’re not the most interesting people, but you know, a couple of Michigan guys, uh, who, who, you know, in some parallel universe are like middle managers at Aptiv. So, uh, so, uh, you know, uh, we very much appreciate the, uh, you know, the accolades, but, uh, I think, you know, our view is there’s problems to be solved. Let’s keep solving ’em and doing ’em in a thoughtful, responsible way, uh, with good people. And, um, you know, people always ask me, uh, do these things about the future of the company. And it’s like, I don’t know what else we would do that, you know, this is a. Fun place to be in, especially giving our back, given our background. So, uh, yeah. I still think in 2025 we’re barely at 1% Yeah. Of the impact of autonomy. And so as, as we think about the, the future of the company and our ambitions, we really think 99% of it is still ahead of us. 

Grayson Brulte: Absolutely. But the thing I love about you guys, you’re not resting on your laurels. You keep building, you keep building, you keep doing new partnerships, and, and the peer. You put out this really great video for the self-driving system for automotive. Talk about that. How, how did you build it? Why did you build it? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah, so it’s actually been an investment now for I think longer than most people think. Uh, and it really builds upon everything that we’ve been doing as a company over almost the past decade. Um, but, uh, but yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s an end-to-end solution for level two autonomous driving. So, or level two adas, I think is the, is a more accurate way to put it. Uh, so advanced driving assist systems and, uh, yeah, it’s a big investment for us. It’s a, it’s a real investment and yeah, we’re, we’re gonna take it to production. 

Grayson Brulte: Qasar when you, Peter has taken to Production is that because you were looking at the market and you saw what I call the licensing market, this, this growing adoption of companies looking to license and you had Stelantis, which shut down the rest, the E level three program, and Nuro is doing the deal with Lucid. Did you see all these market opportunities and that’s why you decided to commercialize it? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah, roughly. But, uh, I mean these, these are longer projects than, those are very recent announcements. Uh, I think, uh, we were probably already planning the video when those announcements were coming out. So, so, uh, so, uh, I think what really informed us, uh, probably primarily more than anything else is, um, you know, how long can you talk about autonomy before you talk about China is always like a great, you know, like a stopwatch kind of a question. And, uh, you know, we we’re just very impressed by what’s available in production in China. This is not, these are not demos, these are not partnerships is in production. And I think, you know, a while back when we, when we did visits, uh, we’ve, we’ve done ’em, you know, multiple times and we obviously have recruited a lot of people out of the Chinese ecosystem as well. We thought, oh, there’s an opportunity to do this because of the existing geopolitical tensions. Those systems are probably not gonna make it out in any significant way anytime soon out of those markets, creating a, you know, a little bit of an arbitrage. Also, if you look, uh, in our ecosystem. FSD has gotten really impressive, uh, to, to, you know, leave the marketing aside, leave the lawsuits aside. Um, it’s just an impressive system and, uh, I think if we were sitting here in 2015, you would be very skeptical. You’d have that level of performance with that compute and that sensor suite, and that’s inspired us in, in, in, in the, in the most positive way. Um, so all that kind of was the, the input more than. Somebody’s gonna make money, let’s make money. It was just like, you know, I think we’re a product first company and we really think about what are the best products out there, and do we have a shot at making the best version of that product in, in the space. The, the last thing I’d say on, on, you know, the general question of why get in there or, or, or, or, uh, why now is, um, what Peter said is, you know, we’ve been in autonomy in the defense verticals and other verticals a long time, and, um. We can use all of that knowledge and the cost of building those tools and the data engine and the fleet gather the, you know, data gathering and the fleets. We can, we can distribute it across multiple verticals and multiple OEMs. That allows us to actually bring a system to market, which is just fundamentally cheaper. Um, and, uh, I think, uh, that’s a big, you know, that’s a big deal in the car business. Um, it’s a big deal in all business, car business. And then that’s the SDS stuff. And Komatsu, it’s, that’s a, we like to say a, a business as usual. We’ve, we’ve done a number of these large engagements and large verticals. It’s an autonomy deal. It’s a vehicle operating systems deal. It’s a long deal. Six years, uh, uh, you know, relationship that we’re establishing. So, uh, it’ll be, you know, it’s. It’s more of the, I would say, traditional applied stuff that we, we, we’ve been doing and, uh, that we’ve been working with Komatsu for many years already. To, to be very clear, this is just the, the next large step there, and maybe a a more macro point as well is, uh, when Qasar and I are thinking about our own strategy, we’re always thinking about, like, we want our customers to, to really win and to really have amazing products. And so when we’re thinking about what products to build, it’s usually through the lens of, well, what would make our own customers super successful in their domains? And that sort of leads to some of these ideas. Yeah.

Grayson Brulte: And Qasar brings to the point, Peter, around China. And If you look at the, the Chinese mobility market, the AV market in China, there’s a common denominator around customization. A lot of these products be customized with dongles or different software updates. When you deliver um, the SDS to a customer, can they customize that, integrate that into their vehicle. or Do they have to kind of start all over? How does that work? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: I don’t think there’s any version of, uh, the future where. You don’t do that? Um, I think, I think there’s, there’s a version of like, you know, fitting to the needs of the customer. Absolutely. Sometimes those needs might be a certain, um, you know, price point. Sometimes those needs are certain vehicle type, you know, what you’re doing for a Komatsu, you know, uh, uh, a hauler, which is a, a just a giant machine. And what you do for a passenger car. You know, those are very, very different form factors. So the autonomy systems need to be able to adapt to that. Um, so absolutely. Um, I think the more, I would say the bigger question that’s on the mind of lots of customers or lots of OEMs globally is, um, should we, you know, when we partner with somebody externally, uh, do we partner with somebody that’s gonna be there for the long haul? That’s a real question. And, uh, and we’ve seen in, you know, the, the podcast like this, you’re really talking to industry insiders. And the like. The average person doesn’t, you know, listen, no offense to you, Grayson, to that road to autonomy. People are really interested in autonomy and you, you don’t need to enumerate all of the, you hurt us. Sometimes it’s been, you know, an OEM decides to pull the plug that’s happened multiple times and sometimes it’s the company runs outta money and sometimes it’s, you know, there’s all these, uh, uh, uh, permutations. We’ve isolated a lot of those risks and I think the OEMs that resonates also super positively with OEMs. Uh, you wanna have long-term partners. 

Grayson Brulte: how do you isolate the risks? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah, there’s a great line. There’s intellectual solve problems. Geniuses prevent them, right? So we’re, we’re, we’re trying to be more genius than intellectual, uh, intellectual is, you know, it’s, it’s great if you’re an academic, but we’re we, we gotta, we gotta pay the bills here. And I think, so when we started the company, we very much, you know, now, you know, getting closer to 10 years ago, we always want, it’s in the name of the company. We always wanted to make sure we were taking research and applying it. Which is really, you know, doing the engineering rather than the research. Um, and I think that’s one massive way to reduce risk. If you look at the humanoid space as an example, just a really interesting space that’s emerging, it actually has like a lot of parallels to autonomy. 10 years ago, lots of funding by experienced founders, you know, big names and, but it’s still very researchy. So I think, you know, I don’t know how the humanoid universe will unfold, but focusing on the application, on the killer use cases. And for us 10 years ago, the killer use case was tooling, making sure everyone has the right tools, I think was, is there a right, right way to de-risk. And so, and we wouldn’t have, honestly, we don’t get into SDS now and we don’t, you know, uh, the, the, the, the mining work we’ve been doing for a, a long time, but we don’t get into these products just. You know, as a off, off of a whim we’re, we’re thinking about this for a long, long time, all the way to when Peter and I started the company, we knew we wanted to deploy software in the vehicle. So you’re talking almost 10 years ago. So you’re talking about chewing on this in the background for many, many, many years. Before you say, actually, I think we can make a compelling product in the space. So when we hit the space, we really have a good chance at being a real player in the space and not just. You know, following somebody else. I think one of the things I learned a lot, being an investor at yc, um, I mean there’s, it’s, it’s a tremendous opportunity because you just see volume, you know, YC is like, you know, it’s like just you’re making a hundred investments every batch, 150 investments, every batch. And one of the perennial mistakes that, that, that companies would honestly, would make would be like, they, they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t think through some of these things and what they would really do, instead of doing first principles thinking, which we try to really. Underlined in the company’s culture is they would look at competitors and they would just say, well, the competitors are doing this, so let’s do this. The competitors are doing, you know, robotaxi, let’s do this. Competitors are doing delivery, let’s do this. Competitors are doing, so we, we don’t, we or the competitors are doing L two plus, let’s do this. And, and, and I honestly have more respect for those companies, and I don’t think of them as competitors, I think as other players in the ecosystem. And they’re pursuing a strategy which works for them. They can be success. This is a giant market. Peter’s 99%. I think there’s a version of all these companies that are very, very successful. So then if you come back to us, we really come from that first principles. What’s the de-risking, what’s the engineering focus rather than the research focus, even though we do a lot of research. So those are kind of all the ingredients. It’s, sorry, it’s not like a clean, simple answer, but it’s, that’s kinda the culture of mentality. The one thing I would just add is that, uh, I mean when we think about, I’d say reducing our own risks in some of this work, it, it is a lot about. Having some diversity and, and having multiple bets. And so even when we think about, uh, let’s say our, our SDS strategy, um, yes, it’s, it’s a product and, and yes, there’s a certain technical architecture, but actually we have, uh, several architectures that we’re working on, uh, in parallel. And, and they, they can at some, across five verticals. Exactly. And, and they can, when we see different performance wins in different areas, we incorporate those into the master architecture. And so there, there is a diversification strategy at the technical level, which actually ends up, uh, having a, a, a, a de-risked product offering. Yeah. And the, the, the other. Point there is like us being, you know, an international company, we have offices everywhere, so we collect data in all these different places. We collect data from all these different verticals. All that stuff plays into, and of course we use our own tools. You know, we use our own tools to build an autonomy system. And, and, uh, we absolutely have, uh, customers who are saying, and who have said, Hey, we’re always gonna build our own L2+ system. We’ll use your tools and that’s completely fine. And, and I think just for avoidance of doubt, I think for, especially if people are non-technical, they, they sometimes simplify this thing like, oh, if a customer uses your tools, you get all this insight. That’s not how it works. Like, it’s like, it’s like we’re selling laptops. Just because Apple sells you a laptop doesn’t mean Apple then like reads all your stuff and like, you know, something gets into your business. It’s, it’s a, it’s, it’s a great relationship. And by, by the way, it’s a symbiotic relationship. You know, where, where the customer uses whatever they need from us. Not more, not less, whatever, whatever they need from us. And by the way, that strategy is not a new strategy. That’s a strategy of Bosch and Delphi/Aptiv or, you know, whatever, whatever company, denso, uh, where they work very closely with the customer. And then, you know, you know, and sometimes the customer uses ’em, sometimes the customer doesn’t. 

Grayson Brulte: Yeah, but you have the, if you wanna use the cookie term, the ingredients that are needed to build these companies. And what you have at Applied is growth. We see that Aptiv. Is now publicly splitting into two. You have the old traditional tier one business, and then you have, you have the growth business, but you’re really uh, focused on growth and you’re also focused, we talked about this offline of, of, d of de-risking and always ensuring that you can have a sustainable company. How would you compare the deal with Komatsu to the deal you publicly announced last year with Isuzu? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: different, uh, in the sense of the ice. They’re both large Japanese companies, but, uh, you know, that’s kind of where the, the, the, I shouldn’t say it’s that different, this where a little bit of where the similarities end because mining is so different from on-road trucking. Where there is similarities is, uh, you know, we’re using a lot of sim similar infrastructure, right? The sim similar products. The, the, the Isuzu relationship is an L4 trucking relationship for on-road autonomy and mining is obviously not on-road, but there’s still large heavy machinery. So there’s, there’s overlap there, but they’re different, there are different applications in, in different domains, even though they’re two large Japanese companies. 

Grayson Brulte: But I like it ’cause it compliments each other. It’s like peanut butter and jelly. Okay, so you’ve got the peanut butter here. and the onroad, you have the jelly here with the offroad. They go together and it helps build a big sustainable business. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: I would say if the analogy is more like blueberry and strawberries rather than peanut butter and jelly, I, those one’s coming from peanuts and so they’re more similar in that way. They’re. And the jelly is applied to tuition. Is anybody even listening to this anymore? I mean, these analogies are not very good. 

Grayson Brulte: Okay, So, Peter, analogies aside, ’cause I’ll probably botch that if I give you, try and give you another analogy. The, the Komatsu mining trucks are huge. They’re ginormous, and if you look at the Isuzu trucks, the L four different environments, different size trucks, ones, one’s longer, one’s bigger. How do you develop the software for these different environments and different vehicle sizes? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah, that’s a great question. So there, there’s so many different parts of the overall software package, right? So there’s the entire embedded software stack, which actually runs on the vehicle. There’s the infrastructure piece, which is all of the, the, the data management and, and model training infrastructure that’s really off board. And then there’s also just the, I say that the science and like the, the true engineering of the, of the stack itself, which is. Algorithms and, and machine learning and, and, and model training and model tuning on all those things. And in each of these components, uh, there’s actually a lot of similarities and, uh, I’ll, I’ll remind, uh, the audience as well that, uh, world’s best Vehicle Dynamics package is also, uh, out of applied intuition on this, uh, uh, called Vehicle sim Cars sim. So we’re able to utilize that and for both giant heavy trucks as well as, uh, uh, on, on road trucks or light duty trucks. It, it’s the, the math is very similar. And so we’re able to utilize all this similar infrastructure across all these different domains,

Grayson Brulte: Are there any sensor or hardware limitations as you build and scale this. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: so that’s actually a, a very technically deep question. So I’ll, I’ll give a, a, a higher level answer, but this is like that one topic. There are entire conferences literally on, on that one topic. So the, the history of autonomy has been such that when autonomy was just starting, all of the algorithms were very, very handcrafted and tuned for specific sensors. And, and if you wanted to even move the sensor up or down a few inches on the same vehicle, you had to, to to tune your algorithm and do something very different. What’s been almost the breakthrough, let’s say, of the last few years is with these, these larger models and, uh, the, the advent of, of transformers and all of these, these modern techniques, um, there are ways to train these autonomy models now that, that make them, uh, care a lot less about the specific sensor position. And so we’re using that science, uh, in all of our autonomy stacks such that, um, you become a lot more agnostic. To the precise positioning of the sensor and, and even to the sensor modality. And so saying, well, yeah, you could have a lidar or two lidars or no lidars and, and compliment with more, more cameras. And, and all of that sort of then feeds into this, uh, what your overall model is going to then output and for the audience, you know, who’s not, let’s say, working in autonomy and is interested in the market. A good, a good analogy is, uh. If you look at how chatbots were, you know, chatbots, pre transformers, pre-chat, GPT, you know, you would ask something simple like, um, in a car you would say, Hey, uh, can you play my radio? And that might work, but can you play my music? Might not because it’s really hard coded to a very specific query. Uh, and so, but we all knew that chat bots were not very good. It is just instinctively you never used one. And then Chat GPT comes on and, and there isn’t. You know, OpenAI doesn’t have to do a, a giant marketing around, Hey, this is, you just use it and you see it’s a lot better. Um, and it’s way more flexible because just the architect, the underlying technology is just fundamentally different. And I think, um, you know, we, we, we’ve, we’ve taken a lot of advantage of that. I, I think whether it’s SDS, uh, or, you know, some of our other autonomy efforts, I think without the breakthroughs that we’ve seen in the last, let’s say three, four years. We would, I don’t know if we could do the business that we’re doing, frankly speaking, you know, even if you look back at mature autonomy programs trying to do cars and trucks, not five, seven years ago, those would be independent teams. And now I think more reasonably than ever, they, they can be, they can be, uh, one team. There’s obviously still issues and it’s still, it’s, it’s not as elegant as one model rules them all from, you know, fighter jets to, to, uh, to passenger cars. But there could be in the future. And we, uh, kind of, our long scope of the company is we do believe ultimately there’ll be some version of convergence across these, all these different, you know, autonomy ecosystems. And that umbrella of vehicle intelligence then extends to in-cabin, and that’s our bread and butter. So if we do great in-cabin stuff in tanks, it actually helps our passenger car work. And that’s doesn’t, it’s not intuitive, but it’s abso or it doesn’t seem obvious, but it’s absolutely real. You know, HMI, voice models, all of that working in, you know, across different, different domains. 

Grayson Brulte: Peter, I’m not gonna get technical, but put the curiosity technical hat on. I’ll say Qasar mentioned breakthrough technologies. We, we’ve all seen the breakthrough technology. Has there been any key breakthrough technologies that has allowed Applied to move as fast as you’re moving? It’s really helped accelerate the business. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: I, I wish it were as easy to say that there was one thing. It’s, it’s more of, there’s, there’s a thousand little things that we try to get right and I think tho those things together, uh, allow our engineering organization, I think, to execute quite effectively. And so, um, certainly with the, the, the boom and AI tools, not only have, have we, uh, let’s see, adjusted our own tool strategy to be very AI first, but also our engineers are, are using the best of read AI tools that are available to us. And so, uh, there’s really great AI code completion tools. There’s, there’s great, uh, there’s great AI tools that help with the quality assurance of software that are great. Um, there’s AI tools that help with some program management aspects. And so if you leverage all of these things in the right way, let’s say you boost the productivity of team by 10%, and that’s, that’s huge, right? That’s if you have a big team that’s many, many millions or tens of millions of dollars a year in benefit. I’ve done hundreds of millions. And then that, that, that’s on the, let’s say the core writing, software, testing, developing software. Um, the actual architectures is as you, you know, you know, the, I’m sure end, you know, like the China thing. Uh, like how long does an autonomy conversation before end to end comes up? End to end is basically defacto default now, as, as what will be the future of some variant or version of, of end-to-end, but. Not, uh, uh, classically, uh, kind of a hand tune models, basically. Um, even at the submodule level. Uh, so that’s obviously a big deal. I think for us, that’s very particular to applied. The fact that we’re multi-domain, you know, and the fact that when, like, and that’s more of a business thing. We spread this cost across so many different, you know, like. The Komatsu announcement, you know, which is, you know, as, uh, uh, Peter, the Komatsu, uh, mining. CEO says in the, in the video, a lot of German Peters in the, in the very common names, common name. That’s true, that’s true. Qasar. He is even not that common in Pakistan. But anyways, he says in the video, one of the largest, uh, relationships in Komatsu’s a hundred year history, technical history. It’s not obvious, but that also helps our SDS effort. Because we’re gonna invest a lot more in that, and we’re gonna invest a lot more in, in, uh, mining autonomy and mining, uh, generally, and that will help us. So I think that’s kind of more of the business, business thing is we just continue to pour resources into these problems. And sometimes it’ll come from, you know, earlier this year we had, we announced a Traton relationship and then, you know, we, all of these, you know, we’ve, we have a, you know, a very public, uh, relationship with Porsche. And so all of those things, you know, contribute to the pot of this vehicle intelligence problem that we’re trying to solve. And, um, yeah, so that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s maybe not an architecture or sensor or AI coding tools, but it does actually help us

Grayson Brulte: From the Applied side. Is, are you referencing their vehicle os that you’ve developed? Is that a common denominator that goes across multiple two to these partnerships? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. So, so the vehicle West is, this is really the, the whole embedded software stack as well as a bunch of software technology, um, related to the, the management of that, uh, embedded, uh, onboard software stack. And so the, the onboard software stack that, that extends all the way as, as low as the boot loaders that, that run, uh, on the vehicle up to the things that the user is actually interacting with in the vehicle. And so, yeah, our vehicle os is, uh, it’s, it’s a core part of our strategy and it’s, it’s a, a great product. 

Grayson Brulte: And then not to go technical again. because I’m getting curious. Peter is SDS built on top of vehicle Os

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: It uses, it uses many of the vehicle OS components. 

Grayson Brulte: If you take, let’s just say for privacy purposes, let’s, let’s call Acme, OEM. ’cause you work with, I believe it’s 18 of the largest OEMs, so let’s just call it Acme oem. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: We’ll, we’ll call it Acme. That’s good. That’s right. That’s correct. 

Grayson Brulte: can they deploy SDS without vehicle os or is this part of a, a package

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: so they can, um, it, it really just depends on, let’s say, where you draw the line of, of, so Vehicle West we consider it’s a collection of all of these different software modules. Um, that, that together can be used as a full operating system for vehicle, uh, SDS depends on a subset of those, but that doesn’t mean that the, the Acme automaker needs to take everything in that, in that package of modules, they could take just the modules that, that SDS needs. Yeah. One of the, one of the core, uh, I would. Realities of automotive is, um, specifically, but it extends to the other verticals as well, is modularization is important because even two OEMs who are both, let’s say two premium car makers in Germany, you know, who could be based, uh, you know, uh, a hundred, uh, you know, miles from each other are gonna have very different strategies. It’s, it’s just the reality of the situation. So, so, you know, we, we, we just allow that flexibility. I think we really learned that in our tooling business, which is, you know, still a big chunk of the company and it’s kind of our bread and butter. Um, and tooling is like, you know, we’ll have folks use some of our tools and some of theirs and mix and match and do, so we just extend that all the way to operating systems and all the way to autonomy. 

Grayson Brulte: Staying on the operating system From a user perspective, when do we see an announcement or an update on your open AI partnership? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: I mean, we just did that announcement like two or three months ago, so this is where the lower expectations is, you know, comes in. Um, you know, uh, for the folks who don’t know at home, I was previously at Y Combinator was COO yc, Sam Altman was the president, and that’s where OpenAI, you know, comes out of, uh, liter literally was founded then. So we know OpenAI extremely well at a personal and, and at a professional level. Um, we continued to work on that. I mean, we, we, we like those guys. They like us. I think we see it, you know, we. What, where there’s, there’s very, we’re very different companies. Of course, they’re large, they’re large language model company and they’re a consumer company. But where there’s similarities is we’re very technical companies full of engineers who like to work on really difficult problems. And so I think in that way, you know, there, there’s a lot of synergies. So I hate that word, but, uh, I’ll use more but more to come. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think, I think, you know, just setting expectations could be years. Shorter. Yeah. Yeah. 

Grayson Brulte: I’m gonna take the shorter slide on that and something tells me that I’m gonna be right. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: No comment on that, Grayson. No comment. 

Grayson Brulte: Okay. I, I won’t put, I won’t push you for a, a, a comment there. What I will push you for though is what are you seeing from your OEM customers as it relates to L two L two plus systems? Are they interested in that? Are they getting feedback from their customers or they want this technology and they say, wait a second. We’re better building vehicles and building the software, but hey, hey applied. You can build this for us and put it in the cars. What sort of inbound are you seeing from them based on their customer demand? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah, so huge spectrum and let’s just talk about kind of time horizon. The. Automotive industry, past car industry specifically, has gone through a real love hate relationship with Build Buy. And um, and there used to be, you know, let’s say the, if you are really back in time, you know, the late nineties, early two thousands when I was starting the car business, buy was very, very, it was the default. Um, and it was system, it was basically the OEMs are integrating. And then in the early two thousands, the teens. Um, the emergence of, and I think heavily influenced by Cruise and, and some others that we’re gonna build. Like even if GM is doing cruise or we’re gonna do some version of an L two, L two plus system, et cetera. Uh, and then you have this transformer shift, then you have China, and then you have the advent of Tesla. You know, Tesla continues to get better and better, and I think you’re seeing more of the buy today than you’ve seen in probably, probably five, five years or so. Um. I am still wondering if buy will actually happen even though we have an SDS product. Uh, mainly because, you know, the, the conversations inside our customers, inside of our OEMs always is what is strategically important for us. And, uh, and the thing that I would say to them is if your end consumer can’t tell the difference between, did you buy this seat from Lear or did you buy it from somebody else? Does it really matter if you built it? If Lear built it or somebody else built it, it’s just a seat and it needs eight way power functions. The cost matter and the costs matter. Uh, you know, say like, the car business is a cost business, and so the, it’s, it’s, so, I think the OEMs today are less emotional about building than ever before. With a caveat, they might still build. So, so I think, I think that that’s the rough, I would say, you know, from our vantage point. Um, so if with that context, well, why would we get into SDS if we believe everyone’s gonna continue to build, uh, in-house, is we think our strategy, the way that we’ve enumerated it, just in this, you know, last 30 minutes is one that over a long period of time, we might not be the best today. We might not be the best tomorrow, but we’re not going anywhere. We’re, you know, we’re gonna flood the zone. We’re gonna keep hitting, we’re gonna keep hitting. And as long as we run the company responsibly with safety as a priority, and both in terms of the actual safety of the system, but also the way that we operate the company financially as a, as a going concern. There will be a time where I think we, we, we, we really have, we have a shot and, uh, and, and we’re playing. You know, the best professional advice I’ve ever gotten was super random. I got it from, um, the NEA, uh, lead. Scott Sandel randomly met him at a holiday party and he said, uh, I’m Scott Sandell. And I had, I, I, I didn’t know the face, but I knew the name. I was like, oh. I said, and I said, I said, Hey, listen, we’re probably never gonna talk again. And for the folks, you know, I, I asked this question often to be, no, I say this thing often, we’re never gonna talk again. What’s the biggest thing you’ve ever learned? And, you know, Scott is like Mark Andreesen, like Scott is like, uh, you know, is, is, is, is, is very, very accomplished venture capitalist. And, uh, he said, make, uh, every decision on the longest time horizon possible. I think that’s our strategy here on SDS. It’s like, I don’t know if the build buy has actually changed or the OEMs have, are suddenly in a different mood. But in the long time horizon, we will have the leader conversation, which is like, everyone has an L two plus plus system. Now let’s buy from somebody who has, you know, who’s, who’s offering it. And all these modalities for a, an efficient G price. That might be, that’s, you know, uh, a sensor agnostic. That’s, that’s. Silicon agnostic. That’s really our value proposition. And I would just add to that. I, I think, uh, of course we support a lot of the industry with our tools and, uh, and that that’s great and we keep making those tools ev better and better and better and better. Um, but regardless of how great the tools are, building a production system is still super hard. And, uh, and some companies are going to do it, and that’s awesome. Um, but not everyone’s gonna be able to get there. And so we wanna make sure that all of our customers, whether or not they can build it themselves, they actually have a really great opportunity. If you’re, if you’re also, by the way, as you, as an audience member, you’re trying to assess and somebody says, we won this business with an OEM, which you really have to double click into is what business, because even within the, within the L, let’s take L two plus plus. There is a safety stack. There’s a parking stack, there is regulatory work there, and then there’s urban, then there’s highway. So it’s rarely that the whole kitten caboodle tools, infrastructure, data engine, you know, uh, uh, parking all, all the way is just gonna give to one company. As a matter of fact, it just doesn’t happen as eyes on and eyes off. And there’s HMI and there’s the mapping system. There’s so many of these, so many components. So the realistic thing is that’s a lot more marketing. Typically when somebody really pounds the table and says, we got this great deal with an OEM because it’s just o OEMs are not. But even if you take like a very public deal with like Nvidia and Mercedes, if you spend any amount of time in there and you look in the details, it’s not that simple. Like Mercedes is actually doing a bunch of that work. NVIDIA’s doing some of that work. It’s not. Mercedes is calls Jensen and, you know, outsources there. No, they’re, they’re a smart group of executives and they, they wanna use their partners in the most effective manner. And for marketing, you can simplify it and say, NVIDIA’s doing whatever, you know, the L two plus system, but the details are way more nuanced. Doing actually some part, maybe they’re doing hardware, maybe they’re not doing the algorithms all, all, and that suddenly it’s like, oh, it’s actually not what the average listener thinks is a quote unquote deal. 

Grayson Brulte: The common denominator across all this is that automotive supply chains are highly complex. I mean, that’s the, the the common denominator. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah. I mean, this is an entire universe of millions of engineers. So we try to like separate, you know, try to simplify this into like, you have a deal with this. OEM is somebody else have a deal with that OEM? It’s like, no, no, this is complex. There’s a version where one OEM could be working with four autonomy partners. For all different things and different vehicle types. This, that’s completely, and by the it, it is just like the tier ones of the past where A ZFA Bosch, a Conti, an ap, a denso, a value could all work on the same car. You wouldn’t be like, well, that’s not a Bosch car, that’s not a value car. That’s not a

Grayson Brulte: that’s a great example that you get with the OEM. If you look at publicly with Hyundai and their Savannah plant. They’re working with Motional. I know that they’re majority owner, they’re working with Avride and they’re working with Waymo, Same platform, ionic five. They built a special version for ’em, so they’re dancing with people. Toyota’s dancing. with multiple individuals, but getting back to the point around it’s a company going to buy it or they’re gonna build it. Based on all the research that I’ve been doing, and you’re following business pattern trends and you’re following talent trends is that. I’ll go on the record here and I’ll state with you in the future, a majority, when I say a majority, I’ll say over 75 to 80 plus percent of individuals in Long horizon in companies in the long horizon Automotive will license their L two plus stacks going all the way to L four. They won’t build ’em in house for two main reasons, one. the, the cost of capital to do that and the, the, the ability to attract long-term talent that actually wants to stay there. And I’m sorry, OEMs not get frustrated by bureaucracy. They just wanna build. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah, I mean there’s a reason a tier one ecosystem, by the way exists. So as the pendulum has moved from completely tier one to hey, you know, we wanna, there, there’s reason you take Bosch and, you know, understanding of braking systems. They, uh, uh, they absorb brake capacity globally and therefore they become really expert at making great braking systems. And that extends to ZF and staring, and that extends to, you know, AP and wiring harnesses and what it is. We, we, so I think generally, yes, I’m not as confident. Because, you know, I’m also have to do this stuff on the 75%. Uh, but I think a big chunk for sure, for sure. I, I, I, I think so. Um, but you know, the real debate always is what’s the time horizon? So I think if we’re talking in five years, absolutely. Are we all gonna make it to the five years? You know? And so that’s why for us, it’s as a business, we wanna be. Absolutely, you know, rock solid position that we can go up and down with the economic, uh, uh, and geopolitical winds that, that change continue to continue to develop these products. And so when somebody does come and visit us. They, they see that it’s a better product than they when they last visited and their work, you know, thoughtfully continuing to make progress and that we can be that long-term partner and we wouldn’t have talked about SDS if we weren’t already happy with some degree of where the product is already. And so we, we, we like where we’re at, uh, and we do invite OEMs to come and take the test. It doesn’t cost any money. It’s cheaper than going there. You know, Cedar Point for the Michigan people, but, uh, well, I don’t know what the Great America Parkway is here for, for, uh, you know, you can take the ride, it’s free. There’s no tickets, no hype requirement. And uh, and you know, on the other end you might say, Hey, you know, we might work with these applied guys for, for something. And that would be, that’d be awesome. 

Grayson Brulte: Your Customers wants to build, and I’ll say to to the audience here, is you, if you do research on this conversation, look into veto rights that some certain suppliers have as it relates to autonomy. There’s a lot of stuff that you can uncover there, Peter, when you ship the SDS to, let’s say we’re gonna go, when you use term Acme Automotive for, for privacy purposes, you ship it to Acme automotive. How is that system updated and maintained? And on the backside of that, Is there a path for you working with that OEM customer to scale to L4? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah, so, so on on the, uh, the first part about updating, I mean, this is a core part of the, of the technical strategy of the system. This is actually also where some of the vehicle os components, uh, come to play because for our vehicle os work, uh, one of the most important capabilities of that is highly reliable updates. And, uh, and it’s easy to. Say updates. But updates are actually a very complicated, very, very deep, uh, set of technical, uh, things that all have to happen in perfect sequence. And there’s a lot of fallbacks and, and things that make sure that the system is going to be safe and work correctly after update is, is done. And we saw a bunch of this at Google. I mean, this is why, this is where we, we got our first taste of, uh. Uh, updating things. Yeah, absolutely. And so, um, and so up updates are absolutely part, part of the strategy. Um, and, uh, part, part of that also depends on what the, uh, what the automaker, what acne automaker wants to do on their end. Um, right. Some, some automakers, they actually, they want to provide this experience of, Hey, every, every two weeks or every month, you’re gonna get an update. Other automakers or different brands, they might say like, well, actually for their customers, they, they want it to be a longer cycle, so maybe only, or pay to upgrade. Like, there’s a huge, huge variation of that. Yeah. Yeah. I think the way to think about it, uh, for the audience, it’s broad software systems, but specifically in L two plus plus, these are living organisms. Uh, it’s not the hardware. We’re gonna send you a radar and that’s your radar, and it, it, it it is. Mm-hmm. And so a living organism. Needs maintenance. It needs, uh, there, there’s always gonna be updates to, you know, the software purely from a security perspective like you do with your phones and, uh, laptops. Uh, and then of course there is just increased functionality and the, the, the, the maintenance and ongoing testing. So. Yeah, I, I, I think now today in automotive in 2025, there isn’t a lot of debate about, you know, con constant updates. Maybe in 2015 there was some debate 2005, that was not a conversation at all. So, and I, I would say today, even in, in the broader industry, it’s, it’s less of, let’s say, companies not having a desire to do it. It’s, it really is quite technical. It’s do you actually have the ability to do this reliably? Um, and, uh, there’s, I, I won’t name names, but there’s. Some notorious stories of updates going out of them. Bricking a bunch of vehicles. Yeah. Even for, you know, quote unquote emergent new OEMs who are supposed to have no legacy architecture. And, uh, and that’s, that’s, you know, it just shows you how difficult to think it’s, these are not, these are not trivial problems. I think the, you know, one of the big lessons also fortune to Google, learn, learn a lot of things. What are the big lessons? From Google was, you know, if you look at fundamentally how Chrome is different from, you know, uh, people don’t even remember like, uh, internet Explorer, but it used to be this thing that was, that was a browser. Internet Explorer used to have explicit versions. Right. We totally forget that our browsers are being updated now constantly. Like I would say, I bet you there’s a, there’s a, there’s a notable browser update every, you know, every few weeks to month. Like it just happens in, in, in the background because it’s such a complex technology. Um, but the, the, the real transition was Chrome emerges with the view that updating is the heart of the product. This kind, quiet background update is, is, is a hard of a product. And uh, and, and I think that’s the same thing is happening with L2 plus systems. It’ll happen, you know, and, and automotive broadly. 

Grayson Brulte: And also Chrome allowed you the ability to build things a lot more easier than, than other browser in the market. And it really went on to, to change the browser market, post Netscape. So let’s stay on on the Chrome theme here, because that obviously changed the browser market. Tesla’s changing the automotive market, the updates, the the FSD, the charging. How do traditional OEMs keep up with the massive advancements that Tesla’s making? And I say that with a caveat, is that consumers are used to and comfortable their vehicle updating and then you just plug it in. It just works. it just works. How do they keep up with that? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: so there’s this company [clap] based in Mountain View, California. That’s the, that’s the most direct plug you will ever hear. I mean, in the business of doing, uh, doing, doing plugs. Uh, but yeah, I mean, I think, uh, there’s a couple of ways partnerships is one of them. Um, I think though, you know, we often talk about the positives of Tesla and we sometimes underemphasize the positives of. You could say, quote unquote, almost a pejorative term of legacy OEMs, globally recognized brands, global distribution and servicing trust, um, you know, emotional relations. There are people who grow up and they say, even to this day, I wanna BMW when I make it, I’m gonna be driving a Mercedes when I make it, I’m gonna, you know, I, I want a Ford F-150. Like, that’s the, the, and so yeah, the, the Bay Area people love Tesla, but. The other 97 ish and some change percent of the universe is, uh, you know, still looks at those products and they’re constantly buying them all the time. So as long as the OEMs can do that, which is continue to build good, relevant products, um, and, and maintain their brands, I think they’ll have a position to plate in the subsection of the product of, of specifically L two plus technology and specifically the software defined vehicle. Where they struggle. I mean, literally there are companies like us that exist and, and, and, and I think that’s where you partner. My, my, if I could tell that, if I could get, uh, one message into every automotive OEM’s, you know, head would be choose the option which is safe and fast. Incidentally, that’s our number one value of applied. Like, move, you know, move safe, move safe, move fast. And so even the build, buy or what, who to partner with, all of those things ultimately can be reduced to kind of fairly simple, simple values. Um, I mean, if anything, I, I, I think, you know, Tesla’s been, you, you, you, you, you, you say Tesla is kind of educated. Tesla’s now 20 years old. The broad ecosystem for over 10 years has known the things that you said. I mean, a consumer knows updating and FSD, so all the OM executives know this. So then the more difficult question is, why don’t you have more Tesla like vehicles out in the market? You do have some Tesla like vehicles. I think you look at a Taycan, it’s a very impressive product. I, you mentioned ionic. It’s a very impressive product. Different price points and different, you know, customer bases. Of course those are two very different products, but, um, so I don’t think they’re completely lost in Tesla is completely one the harshest, maybe indication of that. And, uh, you know, Tesla is a great company too, to be very, very clear is they’ve lost. Market share. And more specifically, or more specifically, they’ve lost the number of vehicles they’re selling. They’re, they’re shipping less vehicles year on year. That’s actually like a big no-no in the OEM world. So I think that’s also a new kind of thing that’s changed is like this invaluable company, this company that could never be touched is suddenly now an approachable competitor. Um, and, and and so I think that also Is inspiring for your legacy OEM. 

Grayson Brulte: I’m old enough to remember, you’re gonna laugh here. When, when you made it and you, and you hit the jackpot, you bought a big Cadillac and a gold Rolex. That’s it. You made It It was game on. It was Jimmy Johnson cowboy style. You made it, you were the top of the heap. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: I literally worked at Cadillac in that era, so yes, I absolutely know. I worked in the Cadillac building, you know, 12 and 12 in Van Dyke for all those who are Michigan people. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, yeah. You know, on that side point. Cadillacs are actually quite impressive. Again, I, this is the car, car park me V series. Super impressive. I mean, if you go back, the m badges used to be amazing, right? The, the old, you know, M three E 40 sixes, that used to be everything. I mean, now if you talk to, we’re also, at least I’m not young, when I talk to like new grads and they, they like, Hey, uh, you know Cadillac V and you’re like, uh, CTSV. You’re like, whoa. Wow. That’s a, that’s a. I like it. You know, being a Michigan guy, being a GMI alum. new EVs are pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. 

Grayson Brulte: The thing that you have in those Cadillacs, I’m gonna date myself again. You had an eight trek and you were cooking. I mean, this was this this was the cat’s meow. You were, you, you, you were hot stuff. Now it comes down to software Peter, do you think software as autonomy scales and as L two plus scales, this is the automotive business growth matures? it. Does software become the defining factor, or is it, always gonna be the brand and I’ll I’ll say it, the driving experience. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Well, I mean, I, I think it, it’s all of those things that you can’t, you can’t separate it into any one thing. But I mean, fundamentally our customers, they, they generally want to have really great products, right? And so you want the mechanical systems to be outstanding. We’re talking EVs. You wanna have a great charging experience. Uh, you wanna have a, a great software experience in cabin. You wanna have a great adas. And if you think about. In 2025, right. Our customers today, they’re planning out there 20, 28, 20 29, 20, 30, 31, 32, uh, products, right? And, uh, and so the things that we’re doing today will actually inform what goes production many years from now. Zecha is like an advisor to Applied. It has been for many years. He was a former, uh, CEO of, uh, Mercedes at, uh, Mercedes-Benz. Um, and Daimler Chrysler before then. Um, and he, I asked him was, ’cause Mercedes is a pretty impressive brand, like purely from a, you know, right. And, uh, I asked, what is a brand? Because he was really responsible for that resurgence of the Mercedes brand. And he had a great answer, which is, is just a collection of experiences. So part of those experiences are L two plus. Part of it’s the software fund part of it, it’s the door closing still. As much as people make jokes about those things that, hey, all these people buy Teslas and, you know, other, other products and, and they’re, you know, the fit and finish, it’s still a part of the experience. It all those collections equals the brand. Um, and it’s like, it’s a spectrum. We’ll have this conversation in 10 years and software and autonomy will be that much more important to the brand. But it’s not the only thing. It’ll always be a part of a, a larger conversation. 

Grayson Brulte: it’s the smell, it’s the texture, it’s the materials, it’s, it’s the fabrics, it’s the don’t laugh, it’s the colors. It’s the way if you look at it from different things. all of that goes into to cultivating what you want somebody to buy. Peter, you said that you as we all know, it’s seven year cycles that they’re, they’re planning out for these automotives As applied building. Let’s call the tools of the future that are used today cause you are building for the future. Uh, how are, how do you meet your OEM partners? Okay, Peter, we’re ready to get closer to putting your software on. How do you meet them at that middle plan when, when they’re planning so far in advance? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: So there’s, it is true, you do plan pretty far into the future, but there’s also some, some pretty significant milestones that happen during those long cycles where you sort of have to decide, well, are we going to do the thing that we did before? Are we going to do something new? And I would say we’re lucky as a company that we get to be with our customers during all those checkpoints and, and where it makes sense, uh, we’re able to then, uh, insert some of our technology into those different checkpoints. Yeah. Also, I think one incorrect view that a lot of, uh, uh, you know, OEMs, uh, continue to have and really hold onto is the importance. Of the SOP, the startup production. I’ve done SOP literally for Cadillac. Uh, you know, I did SOPs, uh, it was the, um, oh, I don’t, I don’t remember the car name now. Uh, it was one of the amalga, it was the, uh, SRX. Now I don’t remember it. And, uh, and, uh, I’ll have to fact check that afterwards. But the, was it was the SLR or No, no, no, that was before. Okay. They, it was, it was the first crossover wagon. Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You guys remember that? Yeah. Yeah. It was short lived. Oh, yeah. This is the one that looked like, uh. For, for curing hearses, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, please. That’s, that’s, it’s so true. And I think that’s why it didn’t do so well as a product, um, is after like CTS had a big, anyways, we’re going, we’re going complete on a tangent, the focus on SOPs. I’m proud that I worked on that startup production, and that used to be a big thing actually though, in a software defined. Startup product that’s, you know, the reason that matters is just very tactical is that’s when the unions kick in. That’s when the, you know, big factory turns up and, and you got widgets coming out the other end. And from an automaker, that’s when inventory costs and all of the dealer networks and marketing. So SOP becomes a big deal actually, the software world, you don’t hear the word startup production for Google Maps or for, you know, any software. You don’t, you don’t hear the next Chrome version. It just happens. And so often we have to. Talk to OEMs and I think, and, and, and kind of teach them. Actually, the SOP is less important than the software universe. The more important thing is we’re testing that software today, and we’re finding those issues today because we still have a couple of years before we get to SOP and, and then we make sure, you know, in the factory line and all the way in the consumer stand, we can update and continue to improve the software. But we’re not gonna wait for some 12 big bang integration 12 months before SOP. To see, hey, does applied software work and does the L two plus system work or does the vehicle os you know, do what it’s supposed to do? It’s the moment you, we start engage in the work we need to start. So there is like almost getting like dissolving some of the focus on startup production because it’s just not as relevant for software

Grayson Brulte: What you’re doing is you’re giving your customers the ability to accelerate. And the ability to scale. And the common denominator here at Qasar and Peter is that is that Applied Intuition is firing on all cylinders. And you are the most interesting company in autonomy, and I’m not gonna live you down on that. So what’s next guys? What’s next? 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Well, we’ll, we’ll call you when something happens. Grayson, I told you, I told you last time we would and we held to our word and we’ll, we’ll do it again. Uh, we appreciate your enthusiasm. I really say that. Uh, I, I think for the folks, for the other founders who are, who are listening, there’s a lot, a lot of founders I know who listen to this kind of stuff as well. Uh, ’cause they, they mention it, uh, is, uh, is. When you work at a big company, you pay on your day-to-day basis with a frustration, and you have all these goals you wanna knock out and, but there’s all these other competing goals and there’s limited bandwidth of the CEO whatever. When you’re in the startup world and you’re a founder, you pay for it with fear. You don’t know actually what’s around the corner. You don’t know what’s coming down. You don’t know what, how the industry’s gonna change, and macroeconomics, geopolitics, and you gotta feed all the people that work for you and, and you’re responsible for them. So, uh. I hope there’s a lot of positive things in the future, but I prepare for an, you know, eventuality that there isn’t, and we wanna build a company and a set of products that can weather all those storms. And, uh, I’m happy with where the company is, and both of us are, are, are, are super proud of the company. But, uh, yeah, there’s always like a nervousness. It’s just like, oh, we want, we wanna do great. We wanna continue to do great things. Let’s not take our eye off the ball. So, so we appreciate your fandom, but you’ll, you’ll hear less enthusiasm and more pragmatism from us. 

Grayson Brulte: And that’s what makes you a great CEO. And Peter, I ask you every time and I know the answer is applied. Intuition hiring. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: We’re hiring, we are more than ever. More than ever. Yeah. I would say, uh, just to, to call attention maybe to some specific areas, uh, engineers that have, uh, experience in, in data engineering and data, data infrastructure. Uh, of course ai, I mean, I feel everybody’s hiring AI engineers, but we are especially hiring AI engineers. It’s in our initials. Yeah. And, and, and then also engineers that have, uh, have interest in US defense, uh, or, uh, we, we, we have pl plenty of openings in our defense work. Yeah. Yeah. The, the, the wide why join applied versus, let’s say another company is you get to work on, you know, sports cars and fighter jets. You know, Komatsu dirt movers. I mean, those are, they’re all super interesting things. Uh, let the other guys work on a chat bot. And ads. Yeah, and ads is like watching my open air. Friends are gonna send me texts like, Hey, hey man, you know, chat bots are actually pretty important. 

Grayson Brulte: And The cool thing is if you join Applied Intuition, something my tells me you’ll keep continuing to build things. So I would say this, join Applied intuition, build The future The future is bright. The future autonomous. The future is applied. Intuition, the world’s most interesting autonomy company, Qasar, Peter, thanks as always for coming on The Road to Autonomy. 

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Thanks, Grayson Take care. you.