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Qasar Younis

Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition · 5 appearances on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveengineerinvestor@qasar ↗LinkedIn ↗qy.co ↗Wikipedia ↗

Qasar Younis is the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a vehicle intelligence software company. Previously, he served as the chief operating officer at Y Combinator and was an engineer at General Motors and Bosch.

78statements → 45claims → 9claims resolved → 78%fully supported → 3.74/5average certainty → 2.26/5average debate potential → 3.9/5argument clarity · the sources → 4said about them ↓

7 supported 2 partly supported 0 contradicted 3 not yet assessed 33 not checkable as stated how the 45 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

25 predictions · 20 assertions · 2 opinions · 20 insights · 11 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 45 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 9 are resolved, 3 are not yet assessed, and 33 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Qasar argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported
Younis: Chinese auto dealerships offer assisted parking capabilities nonexistent in the West
“You can go to the dealership and try, you know, assisted, assisted parking in a way that does not exist anywhere in the West.”
Qasar Younis May 6, 2025 ▶ 21:19 Modernizing Warfare and Beyond

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
100% certainty 3
86% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

3.9 / 5 directness 4 · coherence 3.8 · precision 3.6 · compression 3.4

redirected or did not address 2 of 8 assessed questions (25%). Watch them ▸

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

268 words/min while actually speaking · 27.7 um and uh per 1k words · 21.8 false starts per 1k · 32.4% of pauses land inside a clause

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 23,197 words across 4 episodes of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Qasar Younis said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated
Younis: US is doomed if commercial software firms refuse DOD support
“If small and large commercial software companies don't support our government, and specifically the Department of Defense, we're screwed.”
Qasar Younis May 6, 2025 ▶ 25:17 Modernizing Warfare and Beyond
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Younis: Physical AI companies could become larger than digital AI companies
“In this intelligence revolution, The companies that impact the physical world might actually be bigger than the companies that impact the digital world.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 0:26 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Younis: Autonomous AI training will become completely closed-loop without humans
“I think if you fast forward some years, that will be a completely closed loop, like with no humans intervening.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 18:20 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Younis: Google's leveling system is identical to General Motors'
“The Google leveling system is the same as the General Motors leveling system.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 25:28 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2033
Younis: Self-driving features will become cheap or default by early 2030s
“If you had to ask me for what that number is, 28 SOP, 29, start of production, 29, 30, and then by the early thirties, it'll start becoming very cheap to free.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 37:53 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Prediction Open · timeframe Dec 2030
Younis: Robotaxis will be routine in 200 major US cities by 2030
“It's 26 now. I mean, certainly by 30.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 41:07 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Younis: Future warfare will be software-defined, not driven by hardware
“I think it's not controversial to say that the conflicts of the future are going to be software defined. They're, it's not going to be very traditional conflicts where you have You know aircraft carriers lining up or you have tank columns”
Qasar Younis May 6, 2025 ▶ 13:43 Modernizing Warfare and Beyond
Assertion Partly supported
Younis: Software engineers hold senior defense decision-making roles in China
“In China, this is, you know, this is the reality. Engineers software engineers are very senior within the party and within the defense apparatus, and they are making these decisions”
Qasar Younis May 6, 2025 ▶ 15:00 Modernizing Warfare and Beyond
Assertion Supported
Younis: Chinese auto dealerships offer assisted parking capabilities nonexistent in the West
“You can go to the dealership and try, you know, assisted, assisted parking in a way that does not exist anywhere in the West.”
Qasar Younis May 6, 2025 ▶ 21:19 Modernizing Warfare and Beyond
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Yudis: Tesla and Waymo autonomous vehicle approaches will technically converge
“And so the next kind of 10 years is, and I think what you'll ultimately see is, like, somewhat of a very technical convergence, because the Tesla system is a very sensor light system. It's basically just a camera system. And the Waymo system is very sensor hea…”
Qasar Younis Apr 14, 2025 ▶ 5:44 Autonomy is no longer a moonshot—it’s a market
Insight
Yudis: Transformer architectures bring LLM-style data scaling laws to autonomy
“There's a similar you know, let's say paradigm shift happening in autonomy and in vision systems as well with transformers, and so what that ultimately means in autonomy is the similar dynamics in large language models, you can put lots of data in, and you get…”
Qasar Younis Apr 14, 2025 ▶ 10:20 Autonomy is no longer a moonshot—it’s a market
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Yudis: Widespread autonomous vehicle adoption will occur within 5 to 7 years
“So that's all gonna happen in the next five, seven years. You don't need to go on five autonomy rides to be kind of blown away. And so I think all of that, that, all of that is coming.”
Qasar Younis Apr 14, 2025 ▶ 35:53 Autonomy is no longer a moonshot—it’s a market
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Younis: Autonomous technology could become a commodity by 2029
“So if we look back at 2017, the autonomy doesn't look that much different, the players are generally the same, but I think 10 years from now, autonomy will be very, very different, insofar as it might even be a commodity.”
Qasar Younis Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 2:46 a16z Podcast | Capitalizing on an Autonomous Vehicle Future
Insight
Younis: Sophisticated AV leaders keep their focus strictly on core algorithms
“One of the easy rules of thumbs of you can see how sophisticated an AV leadership is just asking them, where's that line? And that line, that circle of competence should be as small as possible. That small circle in autonomy is algorithms. That's the coveted g…”
Qasar Younis Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 29:00 a16z Podcast | Capitalizing on an Autonomous Vehicle Future
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Younis: Foreign governments will protect domestic automakers from Waymo dominance
“The German government won't just let Waymo come take over Germany and let Daimler and BMW go under business, and the same thing is true for Hyundai in Korea, Honda and Toyota in Japan, and the Chinese companies, because there's a recognition that if all of the…”
Qasar Younis Feb 26, 2019 ▶ 35:18 a16z Podcast | Capitalizing on an Autonomous Vehicle Future
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Qasar Younis: Autonomous vehicles will cause a bloodbath among Tier 1 suppliers
“I think the real bloodbath in this ecosystem is not going to be at the manufacturer's level because consumers have some affiliation to, like, a Tesla vehicle or, like, a Mercedes-Benz, etc. It happens at the tier ones, but where there's that destruction, there…”
Qasar Younis Jan 2, 2019 ▶ 4:39 a16z Podcast | Self-Driving Cars — Where Are We, Really?
Disclosure
Younis: 70% of Applied Intuition's business is non-automotive
“Automotive is like, 30% of our business, so 70% already is non-automotive.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 4:01 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Disclosure
Younis: Applied Intuition holds hundreds of petabytes of proprietary AI data
“We already have hundreds of petabytes of data.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 15:27 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Disclosure
Younis: Applied Intuition operates one of world's largest data collection fleets
“I mean, I think we have one of the largest data collection fleets on the planet, frankly speaking.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 16:14 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Opinion
Younis: Cruise was outpacing Waymo before operations were halted
“I actually think crews, you know, they were certainly moving at a much faster pace than Waymo. They started way behind, and you're talking about neck and neck when, you know, ultimately the plug was pulled.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 28:05 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Younis: All physical machinery will become autonomous over a 20-year horizon
“All these things will be fully autonomous. But the intermittent steps are very much what we saw in the PC, where you have this slow step up to one day that'll be like, now nobody really looks at laptop specs and even maybe, frankly, your phone specs. But that'…”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 31:28 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Disclosure
Younis: Multiple AV companies currently target operating trucks with no safety driver
“We know multiple companies that have driver out goals right now.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 49:11 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Opinion
Younis: Silicon Valley companies are myopic about global opportunities
“When I was at both at Google and at OIC, I was always surprised at how kind of almost myopic. The companies are just always looking at the market that's just like within the 30, you know, between San Jose and San Francisco.”
Qasar Younis Jul 21, 2026 ▶ 1:19:29 Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Younis: Chinese tech companies are forced into dual-use military integration
“If you're a Chinese company, you don't get the choice if we're dual use or not.”
Qasar Younis May 6, 2025 ▶ 3:39 Modernizing Warfare and Beyond

Show 24statements(54 left)

The other half of the tape: Qasar Younis's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 4 times in 1 episode on the a16z Podcast. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Erik Torenberg 4

Every mention by year

tap a year for its mentions
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2026 4 mentions in 1 episode

Appearances (5)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Why Physical AI Is the Next Frontier | The a16z Show Jul 21, 2026 51m
Modernizing Warfare and Beyond May 6, 2025 12m
Autonomy is no longer a moonshot—it’s a market Apr 14, 2025 21m
a16z Podcast | Capitalizing on an Autonomous Vehicle Future Feb 26, 2019 25m
a16z Podcast | Self-Driving Cars — Where Are We, Really? Jan 2, 2019 5m
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