
17 segments available
Autonomy is no longer a moonshot—it’s a market. And increasingly, it’s a battlefield. Recorded live at the 2025 American Dynamism Summit, this discussion features a16z General Partner Erin Price-Wright sitting down with Qasar Younis (cofounder & CEO, Applied Intuition) and Jason Brown (Head of Government Business, Applied Intuition) to explore how vehicle intelligence and autonomy are reshaping defense, industry, and the future of transportation. They cover: - Why the next decade is about deploying autonomy, not debating it - The convergence of commercial and military autonomy stacks - How to retrofit 100-year-old defense platforms with cutting-edge AI - Why dual-use companies can—and must—set the benchmark - What it takes to win the software-defined arms race From self-driving ride-hail in San Francisco to autonomous naval vessels, the future isn’t just autonomous—it’s already in production. Follow everyone: - Erin Price-Wright - https://x.com/espricewright - Qasar Younis - https://x.com/qasar - Jason Brown - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmbro/ Timestamps: 00:00: Introduction 00:40: Founder Intros 01:18: The History of Applied Intuition 03:30: Productionization and Proliferation of Autonomy 07:55: Will The Future of Autonomous Vehicles Look Like Waymo or Tesla? 10:58: Autonomy In Defense 12:30: Supporting Retrofits and Legacy Systems 13:26: Driving Force Behind Applied Intuition 15:39: Beginnings of DOD Engagement and Commercial Benchmarks 20:49: Features That Benefit Commercial and Defense Customers 21:45: Navigating Technical and Product Requirements 24:08: Hiring Practices (Commercial vs Government.) 26:10: Improvements In How The DOD Procures Technology 30:34: Partnerships vs Direct Relationships 33:18: The ChatGPT Moment For Autonomy 36:06: How Close Are We To Autonomy Being Ubiquitous? 38:49: The Future of Autonomy, Mission-Driven Engineers
"a mobile operating system versus an operating system that goes in a vehicle that's safety critical are different let alone the autonomy application that's s on top of that operating system and I think..."
"co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition. Uh, Applied Intuition is a vehicle intelligence company. Um, that means we build we make software and AI that ultimately makes it onto vehicles. So, that's too..."
"tell us about your role. Yeah. Jason Brown, I lead the government business for applied. So based here in DC in our DC office, we have about 110 folks purely dedicated to the government mission, but re..."
"of autonomy Yeah. in vehicles from, you know, something that a generation where we almost probably wouldn't recognize it to today. Yeah. And I think we've been talking about driverless cars, etc. for,..."
"like more traditional US auto manufacturers like how are they going to look more like Whimo or more like Tesla or what what is definitely more like Tesla. Got it. And uh and that's not only US automak..."
"approach is generally the same right for defense where you need to have the same sort of approach and simulation and the tooling that you develop autonomy for the commercial side is exactly what you n..."
"balance between for specifically for DoD between like supporting retrofits and legacy systems and helping make those extend the lifetime and make those modern versus you know some new systems that are..."
"backing up uh you know you launched you alluded to this you launched your defense business in 2019 so six years ago or so now before it was cool in Silicon like squarely when it was not cool in Silico..."
"Yeah, it's very different. It's super it's notoriously complex. It's uh you know the procurement processes and cycles are really different. You alluded to this. So after that meeting with General Dyna..."
"spent my career before investing at Palunteer and uh, you know, a large reason why we were able to sell to customers like BP and others where, you know, people liked that Palunteer was the software th..."
"but from like a you know, one level down I get like building blocks are the same. You can share features, you can share things across, but like are there any big technical requirements or product fund..."
"affected like just how you run your business in terms of who you hire, you know, do do you segregate the company based on sort of I work on commercial or I work on government? How like how do you orga..."
"mean, you just touched on this. There is obviously a huge push right now to modernize and improve the way the DoD procures technology, especially software. It's been going on for several years with DI..."
"maybe some advice from you both from your experience uh with applied for other startups who are selling into the DoD how important are partnerships versus building direct relationships with DIU and th..."
"Um it's been uh you know a a wild 10 years or so in the world of autonomy and we're starting to see we talked about Whimo the glimmers in the consumer space it's coming people can suddenly or people a..."
"this one click. And what about outside of outside of, you know, me buying my personal self-driving vehicle in in in indust whether it's in industry or or in the government? How close are we to autonom..."
"an extremely exciting moment. What's next? What's on your minds? What do you What keeps you up at night? We're a, you know, deeply technical company. Vast majority of my employees are are software eng..."