The Operating System for Self Driving Cars (and Tanks, and Trucks...) With Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig of Applied Intuition
episode
No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
45 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is Applied Intuition’s core mission and how did the company get started?
Casper and Peter, thank you so much for joining me today on No Priors.
Thanks for having us.
Why does Applied Intuition build its own vehicle operating system instead of using third‑party stacks?
I was worried about you. You look usually a button bad or something nice. That's
kinda that's concerned.
How can autonomous‑vehicle technology help bring vehicle manufacturing back to the United States?
Is everything okay? Yeah, it is.
What safety metrics should be used to judge when autonomous systems are ready for public roads?
Yeah, it is. It is.
When can we expect large‑scale deployment of self‑driving cars, trucks and drones?
It is.
Uh two things.
How will widespread autonomy reshape city planning, parking and urban design?
One is, you know, I wanted to fit in with the San Francisco vibe. You know, Sunnyvale.
What role does synthetic data and AI tooling play in training Applied Intuition’s models?
I I usually dress more like PDF. I I think that's my outfit.
What types of engineers and researchers is Applied Intuition hiring to accelerate the autonomous‑vehicle revolution?
Uh secondly, you know, I got I got this Carhartt, you know, thing. And I don't know if you guys know Carhartt is suddenly cool. Uh I got the memo from the you know Cool Club Newsletter. It's a Detroit brand, if anybody doesn't know. We're representing Detroit. Detroit in Silicon Valley. Very nice. Very nice. Yeah, I just
thought um I thought You're not impressed. It's okay. I I'm extremely impressed. I thought it was one of those things where um I think you guys just raised at a fifteen billion dollar evaluation and so I thought it was more like kinda you're done. No, no, no, no. No, no, no, no. So last night we were having So last night we were
having dinner with uh with one of the top three global OEM CTOs, and he says, you know, I I can't reveal who it is only because it's active, active uh negotiations on a deal. And he says, Well, you know, congratulations on the fundraise. How do you feel? And I said, Well, you know, honestly, I feel a little nervous. You know, we have we have, you know, big goals ahead of us. He said, Don't be a coward. Attack. I will send that message to my team. Don't be cowards, attack.
I mean, I guess um in general when I think about you also I've known I've known you for um over a decade. Yeah. I think I've led two of your rounds and I I feel like you're the most successful, most quiet company in AI. You've you're now at over a thousand people, you're in the hundreds of millions of revenue, you've been profitable the whole time. So you haven't spent a dime, I think, of any of the money that you've ever raised, which is pretty insane from unbelievable to me as well. Capital efficiency perspective. But we're trying to change that quiet part, by the way. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, but you've been super finest to San Francisco. See my See mom? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Could you tell people a little bit about more generally what you do?
I know you have three lines of business around engineering, tooling, um, autonomy, and then sort of uh in car yeah uh related product. Could you kind of break down the origins of the company, how you got started, what you focus on, and just kind of give a primer? Cause I think again, you've you've accomplished an enormous amount. There's still a lot ahead of you, but my gosh, you've you've done some of the things. Yeah, I mean, when uh
by the way, this is uh directly for founders more than anything else, is uh there's a huge value in especially when the company's young, not to be constantly out there. I'm sure there's downsides as well, like people don't know you and it's harder to recruit or whatever. That's never really been a huge issue for us. But the advantages you get is you can operate, you know, the moment you say we do X, there's an expectation you do X, even if X ends up being wrong. Uh-huh. And so I think that like it's like you know, keep your identity small kind of view. And so yeah, the company uh applied intuition is a fifteen billion dollar, we just uh raised fifteen billion dollar profitable AI company. And what that what we really do is we're uh we're in we build vehicle intelligence.
So it's a broad category of how do you take this, uh, you know, all the positive things about AI that we're seeing in, you know, in LLMs and in chat. And you take them into the real world. So how do you put intelligence into cars and trucks and tanks and fighter jets? And uh and as roughly as those three business lines. So we originally started with engineering tools in order to build and deploy that type of you know intelligence into vehicles uh and test it and validate it, because unlike your laptop, um, these are safety critical systems.
This was initially stuff that was built, I think, for the self driving world, right?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is Applied Intuition’s core mission and how did the company get started?
0:05–0:12
2
Why does Applied Intuition build its own vehicle operating system instead of using third‑party stacks?
0:12–0:17
3
How can autonomous‑vehicle technology help bring vehicle manufacturing back to the United States?
0:17–0:18
4
What safety metrics should be used to judge when autonomous systems are ready for public roads?
0:18–0:18
5
When can we expect large‑scale deployment of self‑driving cars, trucks and drones?
0:18–0:20
6
How will widespread autonomy reshape city planning, parking and urban design?
0:20–0:24
7
What role does synthetic data and AI tooling play in training Applied Intuition’s models?
0:24–0:28
8
What types of engineers and researchers is Applied Intuition hiring to accelerate the autonomous‑vehicle revolution?
0:28–45:18
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from No Priors: Artificial Intelligence | Technology | Startups
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