Transcript: The Most Interesting Company in Autonomy

Executive Summary

Fresh off a $600 million funding round that valued the company at $15 billion, Applied Intuition’s Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig join the podcast to discuss their expansive vision for the future of autonomy. They detail the company’s evolution from an engineering tooling provider to a multi-domain leader in “vehicle intelligence,” with active projects in defense,mining, trucking, and maritime autonomy. 

The conversation also offers an exclusive look into their deep collaboration with OpenAI, which aims to integrate advanced AI directly into the vehicle’s operating system to create next-generation in-car experiences.

Key Topics & Timestamps

[00:30] The $600 Million Raise at a $15 Billion Valuation 

The discussion begins with Applied Intuition’s recent press release announcing a new funding round. The company raised $600 million, which was specified as a combination of primary investment and a tender offer, at a $15 billion valuation.

[01:45] Defining Applied Intuition: More Than Just a Car Company 

Applied Intuition defines its focus as “vehicle intelligence,” which includes but is broader than just autonomy. The company started by building engineering tools for developing and testing autonomous systems before expanding into building the autonomous systems themselves. They emphasize the term “vehicles” over “cars,” as they are a dual-use company operating across defense, construction, mining, and trucking.

[04:00] Expanding into Aerial, Maritime, and Collaborative Autonomy 

Through the acquisition of EpiSci, Applied Intuition is now working on aerial and maritime autonomy, with existing production contracts in the maritime space. The company is also focused on the growing field of “collaborative autonomy,” where multiple autonomous systems work together to achieve a common goal in both defense and commercial applications like mining.

[06:30] An Opportunistic Strategy: The Embark Acquisition and Autonomous Trucking

Applied Intuition follows an opportunistic strategy rather than a rigid, unchanging one. The acquisition of Embark’s autonomous trucking stack is a key example; the co-founders admit that just six months before the deal, they would have said getting into L4 trucking was unlikely, but they seized the opportunity when it emerged. They view the autonomous trucking market as a growth opportunity for all players and believe it is not a zero-sum game.

[11:30] Deploying L5-style Autonomy for the Department of Defense 

The guests distinguish between Level 4 autonomy (geofenced areas) and Level 5 (can go anywhere a human can). They state that military use cases are closer to Level 5, requiring vehicles to navigate roads, fields, and woods. In a recent project, they demonstrated the ability to quickly integrate their autonomy technology onto an Army Infantry Squad Vehicle (ISV), which was then used in a series of tests with soldiers.

[15:30] The Deep Collaboration with OpenAI to Revolutionize In-Car AI 

Applied Intuition has a deep technical partnership with OpenAI, where engineers from both companies are working closely together. The goal is to integrate large language models directly into the vehicle’s core operating system, leveraging Applied’s deep automotive and OS expertise to create unique in-car experiences that go far beyond current capabilities. This collaboration also gives them access to early AI technology not yet available via public APIs.

[20:00] The Inevitable Future of In-Vehicle Payments and User Passports 

The company sees in-vehicle purchasing as a natural evolution of making vehicles more intelligent, a concept they have been aware of for a “long while”. When asked about creating an “Applied passport” to allow users to carry their personalized settings and experience between vehicles, they called it a “great idea” and confirmed it is something they could technically provide for their OEM customers, depending on market demand.

[25:30] Becoming the “Vehicle Intelligence” Category Leader

When asked if the goal is to become the “Microsoft of autonomy,” the co-founders state they aim to create and lead a new category altogether: “vehicle intelligence”. They admire Microsoft’s long-term resilience and ability to navigate massive technological shifts, a quality they hope to emulate as a company.

[30:00] Why a $170,000 Vehicle Can Be Less Intelligent Than a $33,000 Vehicle 

There is “shockingly not a correlation between MSRP and technical depth” in today’s auto market. The speakers suggest this is because some premium brands prioritize their brand and the physical driving experience over technology, or because developing deep software expertise is not a priority for companies that are already highly successful. However, they believe vehicle intelligence will inevitably be in all vehicles as consumers increasingly demand it.

[42:00] The Critical Difference Between a Software Update and a Safety Recall

A software issue should only be labeled a “recall” when it poses a legitimate safety risk that could lead to an accident or harm. The team takes safety-critical software development “extremely seriously”. Non-safety-critical issues, like a bug in the infotainment system, are simply software updates, not recalls.

[45:30] Deconstructing the Hype: Can AI Models from Meta Really Drive a Car? 

While it’s believable that a research lab can create a demo of an AI model driving a car, getting that technology to a reliable, production-ready state is “extremely difficult”. The process involves much more than the initial model; it is compared to the difference between a simple LinkedIn clone and the actual, feature-rich social network. While they monitor all research, they do not anticipate that this particular demo will be productionized.

[52:30] The Guiding Philosophy: Why Success is a “Lousy Teacher” 

The leadership’s biggest fear is that the company will become arrogant. They operate by the Bill Gates quote, “success is a lousy teacher because it seduces smart people into thinking they can’t fail”. Their strategy is to remain disciplined, paranoid, and focused on serving their customers to ensure long-term success.

Watch the Full Episode of The Road to Autonomy

Full Episode Transcript

Grayson Brulte: Qasar, Peter, it’s always great to have you on the road to autonomy. I was speaking with a banker the other day before your press release and they said, what do you think applied to tuition?. I said, it’s the most interesting company in autonomy. And lo and behold, you put out a press release, you raised 600 million at a $15 billion valuation. I guess that was proven right, but your investors already know that.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah. Yeah. The, the, uh, the small, uh, by the way, the small star, I, I, I’m, I’m sure my, my, the finance team would be, uh, saying it’s 600 million in primary and, and a tender. So it’s, it’s a, you know, there’s this, the bankers will appreciate that nuance. Maybe everybody else won’t. Uh, but no, thank you for having us on again, and, uh, you know. Now we can, with, with that type of introduction, we can only disappoint the audience. So you should have, you should, you should have said, uh, this is a company. I’m not sure if they’re gonna do well. And then the audience is like, wow. I’m pleasantly surprised they’re still alive. But yes. Thank you. Thanks for having Asana. Thanks for the kind words.

Grayson Brulte: very welcome. You’re doing a lot more than while. You’re doing great. How’s that? You’re making autonomy. Great. Again, if you wanna say that phrase.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: We’ll take it. We’ll take it. I would just add it’s, it’s all, it’s all, honestly, it’s about the customers and I think we, we’ve, uh, our customers are happy with us, and I think that’s the most important thing. 100%. 100%.

Grayson Brulte: a validation. So you, you, you raise that capital. What’s next for Applied intuition?. Where are you going?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah, I mean, so, uh, for, as a way of introduction for the people who don’t know the company, maybe I’ll, I’ll give a little, like a two, 2 cents there and then, and then, uh, it’ll become a bit more clear. So, applied intuition, $15 billion, uh, company that, uh, focuses on vehicle intelligence. Uh, vehicle intelligence is obviously autonomy, but it’s also a bit more than that. We originally started as. Just a engineering tooling company. We would build the tools that you would use to develop, test, and deploy autonomous systems. Then we expanded that to all types of software on vehicles and, uh, we’re using the word vehicles and not cars, though we, both Peter and I come from Detroit. We’re both car guys in our, in our truest sense. Uh, we liked, I mean, just earlier today I was in, in a customer as a, with a CTO of a of a. Top, you know, of three manufacturer and we probably spent 20 minutes talking about cars and they said, oh, we gotta, we gotta talk business. Uh, because, you know, and sometimes we forget that we love the car business. We love, we, we love the products itself. But that’s where we started. And then we expanded to all these different vehicle types. So we do, you know, defense work, uh, so we’re dual use company. We do construction and mining, we do, uh, trucking. And so. Vehicles broadly, and we provide the, uh, intelligence. So we, and then we got into autonomy directly as well. So we started building autonomous systems. So that’s the company for anyone who doesn’t know. Um, and in terms of what, you know, where, and you know, where we wanna go and kind of what the next steps for the company is, we wanna do more of what we’ve already been doing, um, which is, you know, supporting our, our customers globally. Um, as we, we. We play in every region except China. So all of those offices, uh, and, and helping them grow all of our product lines. So supporting our customers, growing our products, uh, and of course just, uh, you know, starting to invest in more strategic things. So when, you know, Grayson, when you say to some, some bankers an interesting company, we, we still have continued to have interesting things we’re doing rather than just, you know, we’re not like the, the, you know, the. The high school quarterback who just, uh, who still talks, you know, in their, in their thirties about that game, you know, against, uh, Sterling Heights High School or something like that. So we, we we’re, we’re using the money to invest in the future, uh, which is specifically products which are unannounced. And, uh, yeah, I dunno, Peter, what, what your perspective is. Yeah, I mean, we, we really think, uh, at least five years out and, uh, so our strategy really goes into a lot of stuff that, uh, again, these are, these are bets that we’re making today that we think will play out, uh, in the next five to 10 years. By the way, just for the audience who’s, who’s watching this, not listening to it, it, my chair’s higher, but Peter’s taller than me. So this is one of the few, this is one of the few, few experiences I feel like, what would it be like to be taller than Peter?. Well, it’s kind of nice actually that that’s how serious this company is. That’s what’s, uh, top of mind right now.

Grayson Brulte: Have to have fun. You left out the most important thing in all of that, your acquisition, EPIs, I, where you’re doing autonomous planes now. Peter came on a while back and talked about that. So it’s, it’s, it is C Next, are you gonna go into maritime as well?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: , So EPIs, I actually has, uh, production contracts in maritime autonomy already. Uh, so that’s, that’s something that they’re actually already quite deep in. Um, but, uh, but yeah, between aerial autonomy, maritime autonomy, and collaborative autonomy, the EPIs I team is really busy and, uh, and we’re making sure that they stay that way. Uh, and that tons of exciting stuff. I mean, I think the, um. The importance of collaborative autonomy is just growing. And so this is the ability for different, uh, autonomous systems to, to act together, uh, to, to achieve some common goal. And, uh, and so of course in the, in the defense space, there’s sort of obvious uses of that. But in the commercial space, there’s also some really interesting use cases when you talk about, for example, mining and, and, uh, different, uh, different use cases in, in the commercial sector. And so we’re really, uh, uh, we’re highly supportive of this trend and we’re working on a lot of interesting things in the collaborative autonomy of. I think, I think one, one of the unique things about Applied is, you know, sometimes companies are, are robot taxi companies or they’re an ADAS company, or they’re construction mining companies. I think our kind of multi-domain, uh, uh, strategy, I think is very unique and interesting. It allows us, as we learn things from one domain to apply it to another domain. And it’s, it’s not quite obvious, uh, that that’s a, an advantage, but it really is. I mean, even from all the way to like, you know, subsidizing costs on tooling, right?. We, when we build a tool for our customers or we build a tool for our own use. We can use it in lots of different ways, which makes it ultimately the, the entire autonomy built for that individual vertical cheaper. Um, so yeah, the, the, the, it’s, I think the, the very gated, uh, domains of autonomy, I think is like a real strength of the company. It’s also just really interesting to work on, like drones and fighter jets along with, you know, trucks and cars. I, I would just, I would just add onto that, I think. I mean, it’s been proven out by the enormous graveyard of companies that exist in autonomy, that are building. Building autonomy is extremely difficult and extremely expensive, and so again, quarter our strategy has been, uh, through this, this multi-domain strategy. We’re able to, to take those investments and then just spread them out across more things.

Grayson Brulte: You made great acquisitions. You bought the Embark stack on autonomous trucking, and then. About a year later you announced a partnership with Izu. Is that a similar track that we’re gonna see to, to evolve as.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: I think, you know, we’re, um, I think sometimes a mistake that companies make in, in. Strategy development is they come up with a strategy and then it’s kind of unchanging to the reality that’s around them. And I think we’ve taken kind of a different approach, which is, you know, uh, have a general strategy, but be opportunistic, uh, when certain o opportunities exist. I mean, if you asked us. Six months before the Embark acquisition, if we were ever gonna get into L four trucking, the answer would’ve been like, probably not. But then that opportunity emerged and, uh, and we, we took it. So part of the difficulty in answering where is the company going in the future is you also dunno what opportunities are gonna emerge in front of you. Um, and so, uh, but yeah, uh, you know, I, I think, I think it. The acquisitions, both of ’em, EPIs, I and Embark are good examples of where we’ve gotten into a domain and then started doing quite well through our execution prowess in those domains. But I’ll just add as well, and part of the way that Cash and I think about our strategy is we always wanna position the company close enough to those opportunities that we think might exist, so that when they come along, we’re in a good position to actually capture them. One more thing, Grayson and uh, is I think the, to double click on Peter’s point about a graveyard of, of autonomy companies, I think way too often, um, I. Especially, you know, we’re both engineers and, and most of the ecosystem is very technical. You really can’t be successful in a technical domain without being technical yourself. Um, is the op The opposite is also true though, that a lot of times companies just don’t think about the commercial aspect of the business. They don’t think about, you know, things like costs, like how much are we, you know, how much data are we collecting?. How much does that cost?. How, how much are we paying employees and how much are we paying for offices?. And all that stuff adds up over time. And then they find themselves on this treadmill of having to raise money, having to raise money, having to raise money. Um, and that becomes, that that’s really a risky position to be in. So for young founders out there who are listening, who, who are starting in the ecosystem, you know, one of the lessons you can learn from us is just being disciplined, actually has huge, uh, downstream benefits.

Grayson Brulte: It does. If you look in business history, I think one of the most well-managed companies in history, extremely frugal. Warren Buffett has been on the record many times calling it the best MA managed company I ever seen was A, B, C capital cities ex, extremely frugal, took all the capital, put it back into the business, and the gentleman, if you used it, today’s terms, worth billions and is using a used card table. He bought at a, at a flea market for $10. He said, why?. What do I need?. I don’t care. I’m gonna put it back into the business. And, and a lot of these startups, they get drunk on venture capital. Let, let’s call a spade a spade. But you made a very strategic acquisition. You, you got a really good stack. And then Peter, I’m gonna use the term, you supercharged it, sir, you took it to the next level. You get a deal with Isuzu. Do you collectively view the L four autonomous trucking market as a growth market for applied.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: I think it’s a growth market period. I think, uh, I, I, I wouldn’t even say it’s applied. I think all the players who play in it have a great opportunity in front of them. It’s interesting, sometimes folk folks ask us like. Well, what do you think about, you know, quote unquote competitors that, that are out there?. I think that’s a real. Old, kind of old industry thinking, you know, when a market is completely saturated and it’s everyone’s eeking out five to 8% margins, we’re in businesses that have huge amounts of growth in front of us. So, um, you know, we, we, we think it’s a growth market for us. We think it’s a growth market for other folks, and we think it’s, uh, I think net benefit to humanity is pretty significant. Um, it’s. Driving trucks is a dangerous job. It’s not a job that’s awfully liked, uh, even by the folks who do it. And so if we can, uh, you know, make that better, that, that, that, that’s fantastic. And we say all the time that not even 1% of autonomy is unlocked yet. And I think in trucking it’s probably not even 0.01%. If you look at the overall, uh, volume of shipments that are being made. And so I think it’s, it’s a growth opportunity for, for everyone and um, I think it’s a huge opportunity for us and then every other player in the space and as other players are successful, people ask us this question about like, uh, you know, a company that clearly is not a competitor of ours would be Waymo. And they’ll say, well, uh, you know, is it good or bad that Waymo’s really expanding?. It’s fantastic. It is absolutely positive for everybody. It’s positive for us. It’s positive For Tesla, it’s positive. For Aurora, it’s positive. For gat, it’s positive. For Kodiak, it’s positive for every, every company because it shows the general public that this stuff is real. And it’s, it’s not a zero sum game. It’s just not a zero sum game. And so, uh, so I think the, the, we hold those kind of two, two truths to be, uh, you know, uh, uh, the kind of, uh. Self-evident, which is one is it’s not a zero sum game, and two is if anybody succeed, it actually helps us because, because it’s not a zero sum game.

Grayson Brulte: The greatest thing that Waymo’s doing for the entire industry is building public trust. Your grandma goes in it, your kids go in, wow, this was great. And then they use it in multiple cities and it just keeps building trust. So everybody wants win more to, to succeed and keep scaling. And Peter, I wanna say on the, on the L four here, because you put out a really great video, you did a 10 day challenge for the Department of Defense. You had the drone, you had the autonomous vehicle. Could we see eventually your L four stack go into off roads?. Is that something?. Department of Defense has been very public about for years, almost decades now that they have ambitions in that.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: So just some terminology that I, I first wanna clarify. So, um, so, so level four typically refers to when you have a, a vehicle that’s operating in a geo-fenced area. Um, and, uh, and so for example, the Waymo Robot Taxii in San Francisco, currently it’s geofenced to the, roughly the city boundaries of San Francisco. Um, and that’s level four technology. Level five is when a vehicle can effectively go anywhere that human can go. And so when you start talking about the, the, let’s say the Army use cases and like what was more relevant in, in that particular opportunity, it is a little bit closer to level five, which is the vehicle has to be able to go anywhere, right?. Like as in it needs to drive on a road sometimes. Sometimes it needs to drive in a field, sometimes it needs to drive through the woods, or even more exotic environments. And so like, again, we, we have technology in this space already, and that was sort of what we were demonstrating with the Army. Um, right. We, we literally put some of our autonomy technology onto, uh, an Army ISV. Uh, Iry squad vehicle. And then it was used, uh, in, in a series of, of tests, uh, with, with, uh, with soldiers, uh, in the army where they actually had to do all kinds of interesting things and on roads and on on fields. And so that was a super interesting opportunity. And, and yeah, so we’re, we’re, we’re super excited to be in that domain. And I think the opportunity in. And ground defense is also just, it’s all ahead of us. Like there, there’s virtually no business in that today, but I think five, 10 years, I think that’s a real opportunity. Yeah. The, the, that, that, uh, project is such an interesting, um, let’s say case study, uh, in the sense of we can get, um. Technology onto a legacy platform really, really quickly. And I think that’s super inspiring if you’re a customer, because all customers tend to hear is everything’s gonna take three years, five years, seven years, who knows what’s gonna happen. And uh, and then especially with international competition who supposedly moves very, very fast, um, there’s always this like confusion like, oh, why can they move fast?. And we can’t move fast. And I think we can prove that we can also move really, really fast and really cost efficiently. Um, and so. And I think our experience, not only in autonomy but in the operating system, you know, as part of the business, we haven’t talked about operating system and tooling. I think all that comes together to provide a really compelling package for our customers, including the, the, the army. So, uh, I think, yeah, I, I, I think we hope you’ll see more of that in the future.

Grayson Brulte: Peter, from a technical standpoint, so obviously you have the software, so how do you harden the software, but then from a sensor deployment, you have water, you have mud, you have bad guy shooting things. Do you have to redesign the sensors or build special housing for those type of environment that you’re operating in?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: The short answer is, is yes. It’s pretty much exactly what you just described there. There’s, there’s a whole element to the rugged of components, and also just being very careful in terms of which components do you choose, because. They need to be very robust to the, the elements. And it’s, it is exactly like you described. I mean, the vibrations in, in awkward environments are much higher than, than in, let’s say urban autonomy. Like what, let’s say, way Waymo would deal with. Um, you also have, uh, you have rain, you have, uh, high humidity. These vehicles oftentimes even have to drive through, uh, through water and mud. And so the, like, just the, the level of, uh, the level of robustness is much higher than what you’d expect. Um, but really it just comes down to engineering and, and frankly, I think that. That kind of stuff is probably easier than the software problems. Um, and I, I don’t mean to, uh, lessen the, the, uh, the difficulty there. It’s, it’s hard too, but I think the software is, is the hardest part. Uh, and then the, uh, making hardware robust is a fairly well understood field.

Grayson Brulte: That’s outside the vehicle. Qasar. Let’s go inside the vehicle for a moment. You recently announced a part strategic partnership or collaboration with OpenAI to put chat GPT. Inside of vehicles, please tell me, this is not the original version that was rolled out that was horrendous. Please tell me this is the applied version that Peter and the team made work and function properly.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah. So, uh, yeah, thanks. Uh, thanks for plugging our open ai, uh, collaboration. Um, I mean, for the folks who don’t know, uh, my background, I was at Y Combinator before, and, uh, yc uh, research is where OpenAI ultimately, and, and Sam was a pre, Sam Altman was the president of yc, and I was the COO. So I’ve seen that organization from, its, you know, before it was called Open ai. Uh, and so obviously we were close. So the company, uh, for the historic reasons that Sam and I worked together, but uh, also because there’s some interesting collaboration opportunities. And so just stepping back, if you’re open ai, you get inbounds from vehicle manufacturers and other companies all the time and they’re saying, oh, we’d love to do something. Uh, but uh, your. You know, you, you maybe you don’t have the bandwidth of your, a prime predominantly consumer company. We, on the other hand, are extremely deep, like both in terms of strategic relationships with, with the global OEMs, um, but also in a technical sense. We are operating systems, you know, uh, works all the way down to kind of bootloader levels, right?. And so from that, we really understand the stack inside, for the lack of better word, inside of a vehicle. So. We can really understand, okay, if you have this power of these large language models, how can you really get the most out of them in this particular domain?. So the collaboration makes sense from that perspective. It’s like it really is two companies coming together and maximizing what they can, uh, you know, what their expertise is, uh, without going into exactly what we’re gonna do. ’cause we wanna announce that, uh, in, in the future we can say. Engineers are working together, uh, in a very, very deep manner. And we, um, we wanna ultimately bring experiences that are not seen, uh, in, in, you know, uh, anywhere, uh, in, on the globe, um, through that, that type of collaboration. So, uh, uh, and then also, uh, uh. You know, getting access to early technology. You know, we don’t wanna, we don’t wanna be working on this stuff from, you know, that’s generally available for API, you know, from, you know, two years ago. Uh, so that, that also helps us through this work, work closer on kind of future, future stuff. So we’re super excited about it. Um, and, uh, yeah, I think, I think you’re just gonna see some really interesting stuff. I don’t think you need to be like, you know, a PhD AI researcher to understand, hey, if you brought some intelligence from. Just an LLM perspective beyond anything else. Um, you can make some really interesting in-car and Inca experiences. Um, you’re seeing the early versions of that, by the way. If you go to China, you can see, uh, OEMs who have, um, integrated deep seek into cabins. And there is kind of some interesting, uh, use cases, but you know, we think we can go even further. Than that. The just, just, you know, turning on and off your music is, is really interesting. But, uh, we think we, we can get to the next level of that. So we’re gonna be working on that, uh, TBD, on, you know, on, on when and, and what will be interesting to announce. But, you know, you’ll hear about it, I’m sure.

Grayson Brulte: We’ll have you back a chat, but I had a long talk with a gentleman this morning about payment rails and I’m gonna get to that in a minute. But, so Peter, are we gonna see this integration at the vehicle os level at a, at at your software level?. Is that where this is gonna go?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: in terms of the, the AI integrations?. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The, um, I mean, and in fact that’s, that’s probably the primary thing that actually makes it, uh, such that we can do interesting, differentiated things. I mean the, today, anybody can, can put their phone in their car and, and you can have a, let’s say, a nice chat experience with your phone, but we’re going through the speakers and the microphones, but that’s not, yeah. Yeah. Where it becomes really interesting actually, is where, uh, this is actually integrated deep into the vehicle, and that’s where actually our vehicle os is really at the core of, of the, the technical experience that you get. And I mean, the early feedback that, that we, we’ve gotten from the, the things that we, we’ve shown to, to customers already is. Like the industry really wants this. And, and I think that it’s, it’s gonna be, uh, uh, it’s, it’s gonna really, uh, be an interesting topic in the industry when we show what we have. Yeah. And that’s on the, you know, that’s from, let’s say, the model to the car side on the other side, from the model to the brain of the human brain. Maybe that’ll be something a, a long term, long term, long term applied intuition goal would be to integrate you completely with a car, and then you’re, you’re just 1, 1 1 giant product.

Grayson Brulte: You know some of the world’s best engineers that applied, when do you partner and build out payment rails to connect into this?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: I think, uh, you know, there are many obvious and interesting use cases there. Uh, when you can purchase things, uh, let’s just say. That has dawned upon us a long while ago, and, uh, if you ever came and saw some demos inside the company, you would say that we, we we’re, we’re already, we’re already well aware of that. I think that’s just the natural evolution of, of, uh, of making the vehicle much more intelligent. And I think that’s. That’s the whole theme of the company. It’s, it’s make the vehicle the next platform, the next intelligence platform. And I think, I think we’re well on a way of doing that. It seems really obvious or interesting in the consumer, uh, perspective, but I think it’s even more interesting in the commercial perspective if you’re, if you have a small fleet of trucks, if you have a small fleet of, um, you know, uh. Uh, uh, construction vehicles or mining vehicles and we, we think that could be really interesting. It’s still, still quite in, uh, quite nascent, um, I think with all industries and startups in general. Um, the real heart, and this is for my Y Combinator experience, the real heart of success and failure is timing. If you build a technology too early, the, the market is not there to consume it. And if you build it too late, there’s a bunch of players who are already now established themselves. So we’re, we’re constantly talking about should we get in this business or not, based on the timing. And, uh, and so, so, uh, I think that’s the big question is when will the end market be ready to consume and purchase things through this new platform?.

Grayson Brulte: We think, so you, you publicly stated your company’s 18 of the 20 largest automakers are applied Intuition customers. So the, the first thing that goes through my head is, okay, when are you gonna roll out the applied passport?. So if I’m in vehicle A, I’m in vehicle B, I’m in robo taxi, C or D. I take my applied passport and I have that whole experience where I don’t have to reprogram it every time. When’s that coming?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Great idea. That’s a great idea, grace. Yeah, so I would say we, we, are you looking for a new job as a product manager?. Yeah. I think from, from our perspective, we would, we would love to do that. I, I think it does, it does come down a bit to honestly what, what our customers want. Um, and I think for, for their own strategy reasons, they, they may or may not want that kind of, uh, technology in the product, but yeah, as, as a tech company, we would, we would love to build that. I just don’t know if the market actually demands that. Yeah, exactly. And, and I think, uh, as, as, as Peter has shown in this, in this conversation and in generally, like we very much are a customer led company and we, we, we wanna be, uh, where we’re accelerating our customers. Abilities to succeed and win in their market, rather than trying to accelerate, you know, us as a standalone company, you know, and fundamentally, we’re a B2B company.

Grayson Brulte: You are a B2B company. This is going back into the thing at MIT on this years ago, and United started the Netflix commercialized. It was start, stop, play. So if you, you start watching a movie and then you go on your iPad, you continue and you go in your car, you continue. So you could essentially do that under one of your 18 customers then. And they could have their own passport. Some of your customers have openly spoken about this. I won’t name names here, but some have openly spoke about it. You could power that for them.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yep, exactly. As a technology provider. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it’s like, you know, what areas that we like to play are frankly, you know, uh, heavy lifting where it’s. For the, for the, for the companies may be undifferentiated. Um, and so like you take, you know, we have public relationships with Porsche and, and, and a, a bunch of companies, but you know. Why does a, why, why is the nine 11 the best car, uh, arguably ever made?. Um, uh, you know, Ford Mustang, Corvette fans are gonna, are gonna chafe a little bit about that comment. Uh, hey, listen, I grew up in Michigan. I, I would say the Corvette, but we’re not gonna, we won’t get into that debate. Uh, but why is that car, the, the, the, it’s, it’s because it’s not because of. An electronic passport. It’s not because of even maybe the electronics period. It’s, uh, there’s that product and that brand are, are very, very unique. So I think you ask that question to each customer, which is the, the company and each consumer, and you’re gonna get slightly different answers. But there are, especially when you go to high volume, uh, brands, uh, the GMs, the Toyotas, that passport suddenly becomes really interesting because there’s, you know, a real viability that. The family owns three cars and they’re all from the same brand, and, and, and you want that interoperability. Rarely are you gonna get a family with three nine elevens or three, uh, you know, three Corvettes and so that, that, that, that, that passport, uh, you know, uh, uh, product might break down. But I think it’s, I think what you’re talking about is absolutely the future of, of the business, um, which is, it feels much more like a, another. Platform like your computer phone or your computer and your car. And these should be really seamlessly working together. And that’s possible even without a, an official, let’s say, branded OEM specific passport.

Grayson Brulte: Is the goal of applied intuition to become the Microsoft windows of autonomy.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: I think of, I think Microsoft windows of autonomy. That’s a good, that’s a real convoluted, I’m trying to, I’m trying to think through what, there’s a lot of positives that there’s lot of positive negative into that. Like I, I am not a.

Grayson Brulte: I only look at positives. Only positives.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: yeah, yeah. Not a Windows Vista for sure. Uh, or even 3.1 maybe the, the golden age was 95. Uh, but then I think.

Grayson Brulte: 98. 98 95 was good.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: 98. But you know, what happened at that time too is I see Bill Gates at a hearings in front of the, uh, you know, the Senate. So, uh, so I think, you know, the, the, the, the, I think the best companies ultimately long term. Like what, what, what is the Microsoft to Microsoft of?. Well, there wasn’t really a Microsoft before then. They, they’re actually the first true giant software company. Every company before then was really doing hardware, which is unbelievable when you think about the concept that before Microsoft, there were not software companies. That is unbelievable. So I think for Applied, there’s a similar version of that. I, you know, we’re the category we’re trying, we’re building and beating and winning in is vehicle intelligence. And so I think one day there’ll be a plethora of companies that are working in this and folks hopefully will say, you know, not that applied is the Microsoft of. Of, of cars, but they really say, oh, they’re like this vehicle intelligence provider. And it’s just, it’s, it’s our own thing. The word, the Microsoft analogy breaks down, uh, you know, yes, I look like Satya and Peter looks like Bill Gates. Uh, but we’re, uh, beyond that, beyond that reality, beyond that reality, uh, it’s, uh, you know, we, we work on, I would say quite complex learned software. Our, our AI is the heart of the company. For Microsoft AI is a, something that they’ve adopted and they do very, very well at. Uh, but you know, they’re fundamentally a operating systems company, uh, that started for PCs. And so we’re, we’re, we’re just not that. So I think that’s where some of that analogy kind of breaks down. I’d say from my perspective, something that we find very respectable and admirable about Microsoft is that Microsoft has. Has made it through all of these huge tectonic shifts in technology and, and ultimately come out on top and for applied. I mean, we’re eight years into this business and, and we’ve seen, like I said, the graveyard of companies, uh, in, in this space. And I think we’ve been very careful about trying to be on top of these shifts in technology that have that occurred during those 80 years. And so, yeah, I think there’s a lot of lessons that Microsoft has, uh, is a good example for how to avoid death by, uh, industry shifts. I mean, you have at least two big re I mean this is kind of crazy, is you’ve at least two big revolutions that have happened in Applied’s history. One is just the recognition that self-driving is gonna happen, and second is the transformer boom. And um, those have massive, um, one is commercial and one is technical. Massive impacts. And I think for us as a company. What we can really learn from Microsoft, we can learn. So I, I thought when you said Grayson, you asked Peter that question, what do you most admire?. Peter was gonna say, they’re multi-trillion dollar market cap. But, uh, but, well, you know what?. You, you know, one of the things you can admire is absolutely their, their flexibility. And I think we wanna emulate that, uh, as much as we can. Um, yeah, and I, so far so good. But you never know what the future holds and what the next, you know, what the next boom is gonna be, and how do we sustain ourselves in that?.

Grayson Brulte: You made the law of the right decision. They didn’t make, they missed the phone and, and that hurt them until Satya came on and got the cloud.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: They tried. They tried, they tried. Peter was actually, you were an intern. I was an intern on Windows phone. Yeah. Yeah. Don’t, don’t say that too loud. Grace and Peter. Peter win is when, actually a fun, a fun quip from, from that was the, uh, uh, I think this is widely reported, but I, the, um, there was, uh, an iPhone funeral that they had. Yeah, I saw that. I received that at, at the, at the launch of the, I think it was Windows phone seven. And, uh, did not age well. That did not, you know, I recently saw Steve Ballmer interview and he’s like an elder statesman now, like, uh, like, uh, likes, uh, bill Gates is, and, um, I was like downright impressed. But, um, there was, I. Balmer got a lot of criticisms in that era. I mean, whether it’s a phone miss or there, there’s some other things. Um, I think, uh, but I think there’s, there, there’s, listen, if we end up on the other side, you know, in 30 years from now and, uh, we’re one of the five biggest companies in the history of humanity, you, you can, you can say, Hey, didn’t, didn’t this, those guys missed, uh, you know, construction and mining or something, you know, whatever, whatever the big thing that we, we might have missed. So, so, uh, I think, I think as leaders of the company. It’s making sure we don’t make the big mistakes. I think we’re making small mistakes every single day. I’m positive that’s just the nature of the business, but you gotta get the big things right again and again. And I think so far, so far we have, so yeah. And learning from folks like Microsoft.

Grayson Brulte: you just have to keep learning. And I, I don’t know. I like, I, I like to study history and you just, you just have to keep learning. I want to get into this for a second ’cause my wife and I were talking about this take. Vehicle intelligence. How is it if you buy $170,000 vehicle? It’s dumb, but yet you can buy a 30,000, 33,000 depending on what state you live in. Tesla, model three. That’s smart. We’re talking 130, $140,000 swing. How, how, how?. We can’t wrap our heads around it. We had a whole conversation about it today.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: So I’ve I’ve absolutely, this is not somebody else, myself directly had conversations with very premium, uh, uh, vehicle manufacturers and they say, well, our value, uh, is the brand, it’s the experience. And, uh, absolutely, you know. Like, who am I to say, uh, to correct them when they run? You know, very successful, very, uh, you know, long-term brands. I think, I think companies like Porsche, uh, are, are, are smart on that. They’re, they, they recognize, hey, even if the driving experience is key, you still wanna have the best technology in the business. But I think that just comes down to individual, you know, company strategies. My, you know, my more slightly, uh, you know, cynical view of that is. It’s just not the area of expertise for the company. And to dive into a brand new area of expertise takes a lot of resources and a retooling of the company leadership, uh, or engineering teams, and that just might not be a priority for the company that’s doing extremely well, selling their products. But yeah, there is shockingly not a correlation between MSRP and technical depth, but I think over the long horizon, uh, of our, of, we’re talking specifically the passenger car business here, uh, pass car is, I think consumers are gonna catch up to that. Now, if you remember, you know, if you look at the, the, the, the last big revolution that happens in automotive, uh, before you know this, the software STV boom that’s happening was just the. Electronics. If you look at the cars of the seventies and eighties, they’re almost all mechanical. Not, not a little mechanical. They’re all mechanical. And then you have the folks like Mercedes who take the Bold decision or BMW Bold decision in the eighties to get into electronics. They get hammered for it because they’re learning how to do quality in that ecosystem, which is super tough. Which is super difficult. But they made it. They’re still considered to be top OEMs. There are other rest in peace OEMs. They don’t even think the brands don’t exist anymore. They were either absorbed by larger OEMs in, in, in acquisitions, uh, and then or shut and then shut down, or just literally just, you know, went, went bankrupt. And um, so I think there, people talk about automotive going through, quote unquote a consolidation. Every industry on the planet is constantly consolidating. You show me an industry, even, even the large language model business with OpenAI buying somebody like a windsurf, that’s a consolidation. So there’s, and, and there’s new OEMs that have emerged just within the last few years. Uh, and it’s not only in China, but it’s in the US and it’s in Europe. Polestar to Rivian to lucid. These are not. So I think that it’s just a very dynamic industry and I think what you’re, the, the, the string you’re pulling on to us people who are in the. Let’s say more advanced technology conversations. You really love, autonomy, you know, et cetera. It seems so obvious that’s the future, but if you live in Detroit or if you live in. Munich or Stuttgart, or you live in, you know, it’s that you’re not living in the AI universe and you’re like, oh, this, like chat bt thing’s. Interesting. But it’s not like gonna change fundamentally the the car. But also for, for us, when we think about vehicle intelligence, I mean this is a long term strategy for us and whether we’re talking, talking about low cost or high cost vehicles, like our view is that it’s inevitable that all vehicles will have this and it’s just a matter of timeline. And some brands are more tech forward, some brands are more, let’s say, luxury hardware features forward. But. Think about the five year, 10 year horizon. Vehicle intelligence is gonna be in everything. Yeah. It’s kinda like, uh, so this is a true story. 98, I’m working, uh, 99, I’m at General Motors, my car. I was driving a, uh, Pontiac, uh, uh, grand Prix and my car had like a flat tire tow truck picks me up. This isn’t for all the Michigan listeners, this is in, this is like in Warren. And uh, and uh, he’s driving me and I remember him saying. His tow truck got older, older gentleman, um, riding with him and he says, ah, now this internet fad, this is a fad. We’re never gonna hear about this in two years. And I remember thinking very, like, deeply like, is he right?. And I was like, no way. He can’t be right. And I feel the same way about, you know, AI broadly, you know, for the audience when we’re saying vehicle intelligence also really talking about is AI in cars. It’s the AI version, it is the car version of ai. Uh, but like, you don’t have to use chat GBT for a long time to realize this is really helpful. It’s really useful. Aside from the dogma of am I, you know, is it gonna change the world in fundamental ways? And all of these things, it’s hard to debate that it’s, doesn’t make you, you know, it is not, it’s not more convenient or makes you more productive. The same thing with vehicle intelligence. You, you want cars that are safer, that are more convenient, and ultimately make you more productive. And because that people will purchase those features and therefore they’ll, they’ll turn around and purchase cars that have those features.

Grayson Brulte: Do you think it’s a cultural disconnect?. I asked that ’cause I turned down the 170,000 car. I said, I don’t want this dum. I said, what do you mean the seats are better in this car?. I said, I don’t care about the seats. The seats aren’t gonna drive me. My tooks gonna go fine. Is it just a cultural disconnect?. And I asked that because if you look at range of specifically and the South Florida market, their market share now with the Range Rover, HSC is getting eaten to by Grenadier, the UK startup. They undercut it. $77,000 fully loaded. It looks like the old school defender that everybody wanted. They killed the R Monk refitting business. The $250,000 car that’s going by the wayside, does something like that where you’re having a, a, a well funded startup that’s building the product that your customers always wanted and then the tech people not buying it is, do you think that force has changed towards this vehicle intelligence?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah, I think, well, I think what it is is fun. What, what you just described, the, the, the, that specific interaction. People often ask about, you know, what is product market fit?. And it’s a very ephemeral thing in the startup universe. Uh, or, or fundamentally like what is, uh, a company listening to a customer. This upstart is listening to the customer better. Tesla is listening to customer better because you as a customer are saying that the seat and the way it supports me, it’s not a significant enough thing to make the purchasing decision. So if I look at the, you know, priority matrix of what am I gonna do, what, why am I gonna buy this product versus another product? Software is near the top for almost all consumers. Well do the manufacturers wanna admit that is a very different question. So what you’re doing is you’re just, you’re shining a light on this reality, which is, by the way, most of the volume manufacturers are completely in your camp. There’s none of the top five manufacturers globally are not pouring money into this to, because they know it, because they do their own marketing surveys and they realize, actually, if I put my car head to head against these other products, they don’t care about the door closing. Sound or the, the cubic meters of a trunk space. There, there it’s important, but it’s the fifth or eighth or 10th thing. And maybe for a mom, it’s maybe a third thing, but the ability to quickly connect your phone or just to have good navigation or to have a call that’s just clear and crispy as I’m doing a phone call is tho, tho, tho. Those are higher on there. Um, I really wonder like, but not to get too philosophical here, but if you look at. The big problems of the West. What are the big problems of the west?. I mean, people will illuminate all these individual points, but I think our biggest problem honestly is bureaucracy and, and what is bureaucracy?. You break down what is bureau bureaucracy is the existing momentum. I. Of the processes that were needed to solve problems that might not exist anymore. And so the natural reaction for a large company, you know, we, we know the, the, the, the JLR folks. So, you know, I’m very sensitive of what I say, but if you talk to the JJLR team, they’re gonna have their own reasons. But imagine if you remove. That entire team or that entire company. And you said, but we’re still gonna build the same. They’re from, they’re gonna come up with different processes in different ways. And it might come up that the ultimate inclusion is still the same landover, because that’s the customer they wanna serve. But that bo that, that, that, that, uh, first principle’s thinking is actually a big issue that we have. You know, with mature economies and mature companies. And so what you’re seeing in the industry, broadly speaking, is this, how do you shuffle towards a new reality while still keeping in focus why your products are currently selling?. Because for every person who wants to model three, there’s another person who wants to nine 11, who believes that you know the car. I don’t care about the electronics at all. I just want the car to feel and drive in a specific way. Uh, yeah, Bluetooth pairing is important, but it’s like. Fifth on the list, or eighth on the list. And so, uh, so I think we as tech forward people, we certainly over index on that stuff. But even with that as a control, it’s very hard to debate that the average consumer doesn’t want sophisticated tech forward products. They’re just, they’re, they’re showing it through their wallets and they’re showing through their time. You can see how much, where people are spending their times.

Grayson Brulte: the consumer just wants the vehicle to work it. They don’t want it in the shop at the end of the day, they just, they just want it to work. All the mechanical problems have been well documented throughout history, whether you’re on the Porsche nine 11 or you’re on a different time vehicle. They just want it to work. That’s where the con, the consumer’s going. They’re used to, they open their phone. It just works. They ask Chat GPT something. It just works.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: So I, I started in the car business on the quality side and uh, in manufacturing quality. And there was a long period in the car business, specifically passenger car business where quality was the dominant. Feature, but somewhere in the late nineties and early two thousands, you can look up JD Power or you know, uh, initial quality surveys at the time that the American car companies and the Japanese car companies are, they’re statistically insignificant. There used to be a period where the Japanese were just way better in quality in the eighties and nineties, early nineties, and then that changed and, uh. Then suddenly, like quality stopped being a core reason why people buy or, or not buy a vehicle. Interesting. Now all the quality problems are all on the software side. Yeah. And so I think the hardware quality is pretty much great everywhere and software. So, so, so if you, the one way to look at our, at our industry is. It’s kinda like what are the problems these, uh, these companies are tackling?. And right now the problems that companies are tackling are software and specifically what Peter said, software quality. And so you as a technology provider, which is us, you wanna be aligned with your customer’s biggest problems. Now, what they do with that and how they market their products and, you know, for their customers, they’re gonna have an infinite number of. Positions and, and whether an upstart that does a retro product. I mean, you know, one of the more, most interesting companies for me is the Porsche Singer. Such a fascinating company. The Resto Mod Shop down in la So, so interesting, right?. Here’s a company that takes old Porsches and sells them for a stupid amount of money by literally, literally making them like a modern car. And I always think, why doesn’t. The poor, the what?. Why doesn’t vice lock? Just take the 9 6 4 and throw it right back into a factory?. That doesn’t sound like hotcakes, but you know, if you, if you, if you talk to the Porsche folks, they’re like, that’s, that’s not where the company’s looking forward. The company’s not looking backwards and it creates this great market opportunity for somebody like a singer design.

Grayson Brulte: Oh boy. We could have fun. I’m not,

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: We could talk about that for hours.

Grayson Brulte: yes, that’s an whole other conversation. I, I went and toured a bunch of those and at the same place, it’s actually a hidden garage in rodeo. He had a bunch of the old Dinos and all these.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Oh wow.

Grayson Brulte: Cool thing, Scott, if you’re listening. Thanks for the tour all those years ago, and then, you know, the, the coolest thing that he had, it was a defunct dictator from Africa that was overthrown and Interpols has the vehicle, but he had to store so he couldn’t move it. He had one of the original no air conditioning galling Mercedes with the checkered seats with a matching luggage. It’s like, okay, this thing is. What dictator it is, I don’t know. And the vehicle’s probably still there today, and somebody’s paying them rent to hold the asset. As you and I, all three of us know, it’s an appreciating asset.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Yeah, for sure.

Grayson Brulte: So you gentlemen, you’re building vehicle intelligence. As you build the vehicle intelligence, there’s something that’s starting to bother me. Now, if you push out a software update, great. But then if something needs to get fixed, they call it a recall. For software. How do you see, or are you recommending that that language be changed?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: so so there’s some nuance on that and that’s important to clarify also for the listeners. So, uh, there, there is a threshold where something is considered a software recall, and that is. Where it’s actually a safety issue. And, um, and so I, I wouldn’t actually debate, uh, not calling those recalls because they can be serious. I mean, uh, and I, I won’t go through the list of, uh, of all of the Tesla software recalls, but they’ve had a handful of them. And if you read the details of them, it gets serious stuff, like stuff that could result in, in real accidents. So I say the, the broad point is at Applied, we take safety critical software development extremely seriously, and the, it’s in our first value. Literally. And, and the, the testing and the infrastructure for the testing around that safety real software is extremely, extremely important. Um, and I do think if there is a, a safety critical software problem, I think it’s actually appropriate to consider that like a recall level because, uh, somebody could die, right?. I mean, it’s like, it’s, it’s a, it’s that level of issue where it doesn’t make sense to call The recall is like, yeah, there’s a, there’s a bug in the HMI. The radio button doesn’t work correctly. Sometimes your Taylor Swift song doesn’t load up fast enough there. There really is a safety software, a non-safe software. These are very different things. Yeah, and, and the safety of software you to take very seriously.

Grayson Brulte: Uh, I like that. So you divide it, you’re like going on Qasar’s thing here. I hope to the, the payment rails didn’t work. I couldn’t buy Taylor Swift tickets. Oh, shit. That’s not, that’s not a recall. That’s.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: It’s not a recall.

Grayson Brulte: update. Well, in some houses it might be because the kid’s gonna go nuts against the parents, but that’s a whole ball.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: One, one, uh, one indication that you’re, you tend to be working on something that probably will be made is if you could see it in some sort of Hollywood dystopian movie. You know, where somebody’s like getting in a car and they’re like, buy me these tickets. And it’s like, sorry, sir. He hits the dashboard, says, don’t be so mean to me. It’s like, this car is so sensitive. By the way, as an aside, why are all of our future movies so dystopian about technology?. You know, why, why, why, why?. Like, uh. It’s fantastic. We have all this great technology. It makes us happier and healthier. I would much rather live today than, you know, a hundred years ago where you wake up and you’re like, oh, you know what? You had this health problem that you didn’t know what was was happening and uh, you had like two days to live. So, uh, you know, that’s, that’s a, if any Hollywood people are listening, let’s make a, let’s make a night rider, but like in a really happy version.

Grayson Brulte: The only problem is fewer cells. Look at black mirror. That’s in the ratings.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Absolutely. That’s what it is. I think. I think it’s probably some human, you know, some, some deep human, you know, cave, uh, caveman, uh, you know, where, where the, where, where, uh, that’s what gets us to pay attention.

Grayson Brulte: It gets us to pay attention and, and this week caught my attention, Peter, over in Paris. Great city by the way, meta unveiled the VG FPA two model and maybe one sentence, half a sentence that it can potentially drive a car. And then all suddenly that sent headlines flying. What’s the real truth there?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: So, uh, I, I, I’m familiar with, with this and some of the technology behind it. Um. What I would say at, at a high level is the, there are many different research directions within autonomy and, uh, almost an unlimited number of research directions, especially when you look at all the different research labs across the world and, and all the different ways that they’re approaching the problem. Um, there are many different ways that you can get, let’s say, uh, autonomy to a demo state. Um, actually getting it to a production state is still. Extremely difficult. No, no matter which set of techniques that you’re using, um, whether we’re talking about Waymo technology or, or a list of other startups that are working in this space, um, it’s, it’s extremely difficult to get it to production state. So it’s honestly, it’s quite believable that that’s a meta can have a model that could drive a car, but it’s certainly nowhere near production. And if they wanted to productionize it, I could give you the list of a hundred reasons. Yeah. Why that would be extremely helpful. Yeah. Let me, let me use the, uh, let, let me use the inverse here. You could use, uh, like rept and build like somebody, somebody has built like a, a LinkedIn cloud. That does not make it LinkedIn. It, it has the basic things of LinkedIn, like the ability to post and share a news article and have, have, uh, connections. But what LinkedIn is actually way, way deeper. It has, it’s a, it’s not only is it just literally built out, it’s a much deeper web application than what the demo would show. But it has a network, it has a brand people, and I say LinkedIn, you already know what LinkedIn what I’m talking about. You’re not like wondering. And so I, I’m always, uh, let’s say. It’s one of these, these small kind of annoyances for me is when folks say things like this ’cause it for the general public, they’re extrapolating way further behind. And technology, I think we all know, like, that’s not real, right?. We it like, it, it, it takes so much. It, it takes so much more. Um, but as a toy thing, yeah, absolutely. Super interesting. And, and as a vehicle, uh, to explain meta is. Has a really advanced AI model. Like in that way, it, it works, but it’s not actually going, you’re not gonna see like a, you know, that actually we productionize, I, I don’t anticipate it, I would say. Yeah. And then in, in autonomy, I think literally just part of being a, uh, a tech company that’s working on city of the art autonomy, you’re constantly pulling in the latest ideas from research and, and rethinking the way that you’re approaching things. That’s just. Core to the business, I think for, for any player. And, uh, and that’s, that’s no, no different in this case. And then I think for, you know, one promise we make to our customers is we’re on top of all this stuff. So if of, of the, of the 15 different announcements that are said like this, um, maybe one of them is actually going to be a big deal and a real thing, and we wanna make sure. We’re not, you know, you don’t wanna be dogmatic, you don’t wanna say, oh, every time, you know, meta or open ai, or somebody makes a comment about cars, they dunno what they’re talking about. That’s not true. Um, sometimes they do know what they’re talking about, and we, we gotta, we have to make sure we’re humble enough to, uh, you know, take that and, and, and double click into it. But in this case it, I, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t extrapolate too much. And just, just to also put some numbers on the scale of this, right?. I mean, like CVPR was recent and, uh. Few weeks ago. And that’s the what’s CVPR?. So it’s, it’s like the, the biggest, most prestigious computer vision conference. And, uh, at that one conference, I mean, there were hundreds, maybe thousands of papers in this field that are published and all very relevant and a lot of really interesting stuff. And so it’s just the scale of research and development going on in this field is, is huge. Yeah. And, and I think for us, obviously that’s super important. I mean, we have our own research team that, that not only does research, but also follows that.

Grayson Brulte: The hype is building because Altman was on a podcast this week talking about open AI is potentially, okay, so it’s building this hype. Does all that hype. Do you think that helps to usher in this licensing model that neuro is talking about waves working on?. Do you think that’s gonna, all this hype will usher in and autonomous driving stack licensing model?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Are you talking about, uh, Sam on, uh, his brother’s podcast where he mentions cars a couple times?. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was also on that podcast, by the way, grace. So,

Grayson Brulte: fancy.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: You know, I. I noticed you didn’t call out any of my No, I’m kidding. The, the, uh, no. I, I, I, I watched and I, I, I sent to the team as, as we said, we have a, a collaboration open ai. We, we, we know them well. It falls into what Peter, uh, said in the medicine. I think. I think still super, super early. To be determined, um, if, uh, new research is going to yield a, let’s say a better autonomy system in terms of the question about neuro and wave, um, don’t know those companies well enough where I can, you know, particularly comment on their, on their strategies. Uh, but one thing I think is true is, um. There’s definitely gonna be a lot of providers of that technology out in the market. Um, and that is a, that what that means in a, you know, Harvard MBA sense is downward pricing pressure. And, uh, so my fear is, you know, it takes you, it, it takes you many, many, many billions to build something and then people are paying you many, many hundreds of dollars. And it is like, well, okay, that, that, that formula is really, it’s really tough. And um, and I think that’s the big question. By the way, that question also exists for Waymo. That question exists for, you know, many companies which are operating in the red, uh, which is monetization. Before commoditization, are you gonna have a window long enough where you can monetize?. The, this great technology that you built. I remember one of the, you know, formative experiences for me as, as a founder was in our YC batch when I was a founder, not when I was working at yc, before I was a YC founder, and my batch was, um, the Pebble Watch. You guys remember that?. Smart Watch.

Grayson Brulte: I had one.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: watch?. That’s a great product. Yeah. Yeah. Peter was a big fan of this product and, uh, and the, uh, punchline is, you know, great company, biggest Kickstarter in history. They, they knock it out. And then Apple watches their watch. You just never hear about Pebble again. Everyone thinks Apple created the watch category, and it’s like, no, actually Pebble did. And um, and so again, monetization before commoditization. And so I think that’s my, that would be the thing that I would wonder about. Um, especially if commoditization comes from a new model architecture or comes, you know, whether it’s OpenAI or meta, whoever, whoever. Whatever research, uh, you know, will come out and CVPR, uh, next year. So, uh, those are the business sides. You, you have to both work on interesting technology, but you have to somehow, you have to be right on the time. If you’re too early, you’re, you’re doomed. And if you’re too late, you’re doomed. So, uh, but without saying anything particular about Nuro and Wayve.

Grayson Brulte: Yeah, but you forgot the most important part there. Applied.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: You know, we, yeah, we’re, we’re the little startup that could, you know, a couple, couple of, uh, it’s what’s the journey song?. Uh, you know, co couple of boys from East Detroit. So, so I mean, I. Peter literally was born in east of Detroit. I was, I’m originally Pakistani, but I grew up in the east side. And so, uh, so, you know, we’ll, we’ll see. We’ll see. We’ll, we’re, we’re, we’re gonna keep our heads down. I think, I think my big fear, I, I said to this company and I, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll say it again here, which is we can’t become arrogant. You know, the, the additional fundraising rounds or our continued success, um, uh, bill Gates, uh, are the, you know, from the, earlier in the po callback from early podcast, this is a great line which says, success is a lousy teacher because it seduces smart people into thinking they can’t fail. And, uh, you know, I, so when, when, when you say, you know, what about applied, my, my entire brain goes to all the problems we’re constantly dealing with and, you know, and like, we gotta put those out. And if we keep doing and we keep, you know. Keep being paranoid and keep working hard. And, uh, we are disciplined and we serve our customers and we have a good culture. It’ll all work out. It’ll continue to work out. But, uh, ’cause it’s not like an end state, it’ll continue to work out. And if we don’t, then, you know, we become one of those companies that had a good run, but maybe, maybe not so much anymore. So we’re, we’re quite, quite afraid of that. Yeah. And, and just underlying, our goal is always, is that we just want our products. In vehicle intelligence to be so good that our customers just want more and more from us. And as long as we can deliver on that and the strategy that we have for our products, I think our business will grow. Yeah. Then we have jobs in places we’d like to work. Like, you know, we like, if you like the car, if you like the car business and you like software. We’re a great company, uh, to, to, to do that, do that. And, and, and so selfishly, Peter and I wanna continue to have this job. So it’s our motivation to keep the company to keep going in the right direction. ’cause we love, we love the product space.

Grayson Brulte: Peter, every time you come on, you make a plug for hiring. Are you still hiring?. You wanna make that plug?.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: still still hiring. Absolutely. And, uh, yeah, for, for the engineers, uh, who are listening, if you love, uh, AI and you’re passionate about vehicles, uh, and this could be any type, uh, from, from ground to, to air and, and space, uh, reach out. We’re hiring.

Grayson Brulte: I’ll say this. I’m very bullish on applied intuition. I’m very public on how bullish I am on there. If you want to go build the future, go join. Applied Intuition. Qasar and Peter are a great team to work for. The future is bright. The future’s autonomous. The future is applied. Intuition. Qasar and Peter, thank you so much as always for coming on the road to autonomy.

Qasar Younis & Peter Ludwig: Always fun to talk to you, Grayson. Thank you. Thank you, Grayson.

Key The Road to Autonomy Questions Answered