Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | Applied Intuition

**Qasar Younis** (0:00)
Our mission is to put intelligence on a billion machines, and we think that can have a profound impact on society. Applied Intuition is a physical AI company. We put intelligence on machines, cars, trucks, tanks, drones. It's a physical moving thing. We make it intelligent.

**Peter Ludwig** (0:16)
Digital AI, of course, is building software and optimizing ads and creating videos. That's all interesting and good, but really when you talk about the global economy, that's physical AI.

**Qasar Younis** (0:25)
In this intelligence revolution, the companies that impact the physical world might actually be bigger than the companies that impact the digital world.

**Marc Andreessen** (0:32)
How many things are there where the idea of physical AI, physical intelligence, are going to matter?

**Qasar Younis** (0:36)
There's no reason autonomy should be this obscure, difficult technology. Our vision for that is a high school kid that can make iPhone apps, should be able to make autonomous systems. That platform for designing and developing is what we're launching. It's called Dana.

**Peter Ludwig** (0:51)
Everything that we've built and developed over the past nearly a decade, that's available in Dana.

**Marc Andreessen** (0:56)
Which will we get first, a perfectly simulated real-world environment for training autonomous devices or Grand Theft Auto 6?

**Erik Torenberg** (1:05)
Much of today's AI conversation is focused on large language models, but the next frontier may be physical AI, software that enables machines to perceive, reason and operate in the real world. In this episode, Marc Andreessen and I sit down with Applied Intuition co-founders, Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig to discuss the future of physical AI, along with the company's newest platform, Dana, which is designed to simplify how autonomous systems are built and deployed. They explain why physical AI presents a fundamentally different set of engineering challenges, where autonomous systems are already making an impact, and why the next decade could transform not just software, but the physical economy.
Qasar, Peter, welcome to the A16z Podcast.

**Qasar Younis** (1:51)
Well, thanks for having us. Your name is? I think we've all each known each other for too long, more than I'd like to admit.

**Erik Torenberg** (2:03)
We're lucky to both be among the first investor in the first round, of course, different check sizes.

**Qasar Younis** (2:07)
I was an investor for you even before then. Exactly.

**Erik Torenberg** (2:11)
Let's do that in a second way. We have a lot to talk about today. We have the biggest launching company history to talk about today. But first, why don't we just give an update, a status. What does Applied Intuition do for those who don't know?

**Qasar Younis** (2:19)
Yeah. For the people who don't know, Applied Intuition is a physical AI company. We put intelligence on machines. That's the simple way of describing it and all types of machines. So cars, trucks, tanks, drones, you name it. It's a physical moving thing. We make an intelligent and the history of the companies, we originally started by making the tools that would make the intelligence. Then we got into the actual intelligence itself. In some ways, a very boring AI company in the sense of 83% of the company is engineering. We win by making really great products. It's not like a good sales or something like that. I don't think we're good enough for a sales enabled company. But yeah, over 1,000 engineers and based in Silicon Valley. But we have offices globally, 18 offices.
Our mission is to put intelligence on a billion machines.
We think that can have a profound impact on society, both in the kind of pithy things everyone talks about, safety. If you really talk to somebody who's been in a car accident or in a mining accident or in a farming accident, those are real gnarly situations. Beyond just fixing that, if you can unlock productivity, I think we've seen the unlock in the digital world and everyone's super excited about it and you have trillion dollar companies emerging. I'm a pretty strong believer that I think when we look back 25 years, because we look back to the Internet now, you look at the original Internet companies that are doing surveying or they're doing some analytics and those are interesting. But really, when you look back 25 years from the big monolithic companies are Amazon that delivers you stuff. Apple, these are the true kind of companies that come of age. I think when we look back 25 years in this intelligence revolution, the companies that impact the physical world might actually be bigger than the companies that impact the digital world.

**Marc Andreessen** (3:56)
I would love for you to talk about the following, which is when you first started the company, the knock on the company I think was, well, it's making cars autonomous, right? Self-driving cars, but it's kind of like, okay, there's like whatever, there's Tesla and Waymoor building their own self-driving cars, and then there's six or eight other car companies that matter, and then the company just could never get that big because there are just not that many customers. How should people think about, how many things are there that are things that move where the idea of physical AI, physical intelligence are going to matter?