Younis: Most Bay Area startups are hobby projects, not serious businesses
Qasar Younis · How Applied Intuition Reached $15B (Without Spending $1B) · Sourcery with Molly O'Shea · Apr 6, 2026 · at 1:33
Qasar Younis is the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a physical AI enterprise software company valued at $15 billion.
0:00 / 0:25exact quote · 26.0s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“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 co-founders or founders who are kind of toiling away, and it's very hard to see who's, Doing it for the right reasons, doing it for the wrong reasons, and I think it's, like, kind of, maybe some of the wrong motivations that exist.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Qasar Younis
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: 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: Physical AI will outshine early LLMs over the next 25 years
“I think the physical world and AI going into that is, I think when we look back, I think that's going to be the bigger story. And then look back 25 years from now.”
Younis: Waymo closed trucking because old AV architectures required discrete systems
“Waymo used to be in self-driving trucks, and then they closed that team down because the old way of building self-driving, those are two almost discrete systems. Different sensor placement, you know, different vehicle type was enough To make it actually just d…”
Younis: Applied Intuition does not use raised capital for payroll
“Yeah, we use some for M&A, but then we make money, and it kind of, like, that's the, you know, but yeah, roughly, that's roughly the truth, and we're not using our capital to, like, pay payroll and things like that.”
Younis: The belief that defense tech requires years of planning is false
“I think this view that everything's gonna take a long, long, long time, and it requires, you know, many, many years of planning is, this is false. And I think, especially within the reality of today, This technology needs to get out there faster and faster and…”