Qasar Younis
Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition. On 6 shows, 12 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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.
6shows
12appearances
197statements
22resolved
15supported
1contradicted
68%fully supported
8said about them ↓ Everything Qasar Younis said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Younis: Most Bay Area startups are hobby projects, not serious businesses
“I think most companies in the Bay Area are, you know, are more hobby projects than they are, like, earnest, serious businesses, and it's kind of like, we'll take a swing on this, and I don't mean to disrespect my own, you know, my co, I'm in the fraternity of …”
Younis: Huawei is an extension of the Chinese state, not profit-driven
“Huawei's goal is not to grow profits or shareholders. It's a private company. It's really an extension of the state.”
Younis: Chinese EV makers appear superior only because they disregard profits
“So we say, look how amazing these Chinese EV companies are and look how bad the home team is. It's just because the home team is being assessed for being a business. It has to make profits. And because it doesn't, it gets hammered by public investors. The othe…”
Younis: Applied Intuition has never spent any raised venture capital
“Our claim to fame, which is kind of a crazy, you know, reality is we've never spent any money we've ever raised, you know, in the history of the company, which is kind of, it almost sounds like it's made up. It says that the company is almost 10 years old, you…”
Younis: Startups Are Not Meritocratic; Connected Founders Perform Better
“The other uncomfortable truths are like the rule is the mostly the highly educated, connected founders do better than the not highly educated, connected founders. Like the top, like people, I think we want to have this feeling that it's egalitarian and or it's…”
Younis: Silicon Valley secondary cash-outs before failure are borderline fraud
“And so then the kind of the little bit of the fraud that's happening in Silicon Valley, which people often don't talk about, is like, goal is raise big rounds, take some secondary, and YOLO. And if the company goes to zero, or the company has a big downturn in…”
Younis: Chinese Automakers Outperform Tesla on Autonomy and Features
“The autonomy stuff, you know, we go to China regularly and we test drive these vehicles. Super impressive. And better than Tesla to be like very, very clear.”
Younis: Tesla has solved autonomous business model, but Waymo has not
“The Waymo stuff is super impressive, but it is worth putting an asterisk. The business model hasn't been figured out yet. The Tesla business model has been figured out.”
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.”
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.”
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.”
Younis: Google's leveling system is identical to General Motors'
“The Google leveling system is the same as the General Motors leveling system.”
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.”
Younis: Robotaxis will be routine in 200 major US cities by 2030
“It's 26 now. I mean, certainly by 30.”
Younis: AI Industry Is in an Opulent Bubble and a Pullback Is Coming
“The cost structure that we're currently seeing from whether it's from how much we spend on model training and development to employees to where we're at that phase of the bubble where it's like, you know, like the, all the opulence in the companies is what peo…”
Younis: Cruise's fallout stemmed from regulatory communication, not technology failure
“The cruise example wasn't a technology failure. There was the real compounding issue there was just how did the company talk to the regulators and what was their kind of behavior? And I think that became more of the issue.”
Younis: Physical AI Bottleneck Is Onboard Deployment, Not Model Intelligence
“In the physical AI world, we're not really constrained right now by like the intelligence of the models. It's actually what Peter's talking about is actually deploying them. ... On the hardware you give you. And so, and there's just a reality is of safety crit…”
Younis: 2014 Y Combinator startup advice does not apply in 2026
“So the YC advice from 20 14 just would not apply in 2026.”
Younis: Applied Intuition will likely never operate in China
“China's the only country that I think we probably won't be in maybe ever, but certainly anytime soon.”
Younis: Unassisted driving will be viewed like child labor in 30 years
“And I do believe in 20 or 30 years, not that much longer, we'll look back and we'll kind of be like, it's kind of like we think about child labor, you know, in a post-industrial revolution, that was a normal thing. You would send kids who are in middle school …”
Younis: Earliest robotics will upgrade existing hardware like cars and mining vehicles
“I think like the most obvious use cases that will come early are going to be use cases where you get the most amount of bang for buck. And the bang for buck is a car that drives itself or a mining robot, which is a mining vehicle, which is now intelligent. And…”
Younis: Every car company is developing a Tesla FSD rival
“I think generally speaking, every, every single car company on the planet right now is working on a product. That's like a Tesla FSD product. Every single car company there without exception.”
Younis: Autonomy will be standard and near-free within seven years
“It will not be a long time. You're already seeing this happen in China where the downward pricing pressure for that autonomous product for the lack of better word will become close to free. So now you fast forward five to seven years and every car Has some lev…”
The other half of the tape: Qasar Younis's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 8 times in 4 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Erik Torenberg 4Jack Altman 2Mike Maples, Jr. 1Christian Garrett 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
the a16z Podcast 4
Sourcery 3
Lenny's Podcast 1
2026 4 mentions in 1 episode
2025 3 mentions in 2 episodes 2 per episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Qasar's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| a16zLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition | 5 | 78 | 78% 7/9 | full record on the a16z Podcast → |
 IN DEPTHLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition | 1 | 49 | 100% 2/2 | full record on In Depth → |
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition | 1 | 24 | 100% 2/2 | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |
 LATENT SPACELEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition | 1 | 17 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Latent Space → |
| SOURCERYLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition | 3 | 16 | 50% 2/4 | full record on Sourcery → |
 NO PRIORSLEDGER | Co-founder & CEO, Applied Intuition | 1 | 13 | 50% 2/4 | full record on No Priors → |