The most successful AI company you’ve never heard of | Qasar Younis
Qasar Younis is the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a $15 billion AI company that adds intelligence to cars, tractors, planes, submarines, and other vehicles—essentially, Tesla or Waymo without the hardware. He was previously COO of Y Combinator, started his career as an engineer at GM and Bosch, and was born on a farm in Pakistan.
We discuss:
- Why the biggest AI revolution will play out in mining, farming, construction, and trucking over the next 5 to 10 years, not in software
- Why Qasar intentionally stayed under the radar for nearly a decade while building Applied Intuition, and why most founders shouldn’t do that
- The truth about China’s AI capabilities and why comparisons to American companies are fundamentally flawed
- The company values that drive Applied Intuition: speed above everything, laugh a lot, half the work is follow-up, never disappoint the customer
- The biggest lessons from Qasar’s stint as YC’s COO, including that the most successful companies show traction very early
- How reading old books is the best way to build taste
—
Brought to you by:
Omni—AI analytics your customers can trust
Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security.
Lovable—Build apps by simply chatting with AI
—
Episode transcript: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/the-most-successful-ai-company-youve-never-heard-of
—
Archive of all Lenny's Podcast transcripts: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/yxi4s2w998p1gvtpu4193/AMdNPR8AOw0lMklwtnC0TrQ?rlkey=j06x0nipoti519e0xgm23zsn9&st=ahz0fj11&dl=0
—
Where to find Qasar Younis:
- X: https://x.com/qasar
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/qasar
- Website: https://qy.co
- Reading list: https://qy.co/books
—
Where to find Lenny:
- Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com
- X: https://twitter.com/lennysan
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/
—
In this episode, we cover:
(00:00) Introduction to Qasar and Applied Intuition
(04:01) The optimistic vision: How AI will create abundance
(08:49) Why anxiety about AI comes from misunderstanding—and how to fight fear with knowledge
(12:58) The market sell-off explained
(16:31) Self-driving cars: Why 30,000 annual deaths prove we need autonomy now
(20:22) The spectrum of physical AI
(28:00) How AI is coming just in time
(33:26) Why comparing Chinese AI companies to American AI companies is a category error
(39:12) Why Qasar finally joined Twitter after staying silent for a decade
(45:08) Why successful companies almost always show early signs of traction
(50:40) Applied Intuition’s core values
(56:00) Why the company cleans its own office—and never spent a dollar of raised capital
(58:50) Quasar’s reading philosophy
(01:06:14) How to operationalize listening to naysayers
(01:12:53) The importance of decisiveness
(01:14:55) Removing emotions from decisions
(01:19:02) Why most Silicon Valley CEOs don’t have great taste—and how to develop it
—
Referenced:
- Applied Intuition: https://www.appliedintuition.com
- Marc Andreessen: The real AI boom hasn’t even started yet: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/marc-andreessen-the-real-ai-boom
- Elad Gil’s website: https://eladgil.com
- Bosch: https://www.bosch.com
- Berkshire Hathaway: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com
- Naval Ravikant on X: https://x.com/naval
- Y Combinator: https://www.ycombinator.com
- Waymo: https://waymo.com/
- Tesla: https://www.tesla.com
- DeepSeek: https://www.deepseek.com
- Rivian: https://rivian.com
- Crate & Barrel: https://www.crateandbarrel.com
- OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai
- Sam Altman on X: https://x.com/sama
- Peter Ludwig on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peterwludwig
- What Steve Jobs really meant when he said ‘Good artists copy; great artists steal’: https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/what-steve-jobs-really-meant-when-he-said-good-art
