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Published · transcript-backedQasar Younis: preference
8 Mar 2026 Lenny's Podcast The most successful AI company you’ve never heard of | Qasar Younis
“I continue to believe that I think our brain emotionally loves the humanoid concept because we're monkeys.”
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- Speaker
- Qasar Younis
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- preference
- Recorded
- 8 Mar 2026
- Publisher
- Lenny's Podcast
Transcript context
…So I would think about this, the framing here matters again on a spectrum. So there are robots around us like Roombas, that clean your carpet where you're sleeping. There's robots around you when you make a coffee, that's an automated machine that is taking an input and doing a bunch of things based on what you need. So what you're really talking about is how fast can we go up that spectrum to where you have a robot that can take on lots of tasks with little guidance. And the way that I would think about this is, let's say we're sitting in, this podcast is happening not in 2026, but 2006, and you're asking me the same question about mobile and you say, "Well, mobile is coming." This is, remember, pre-iPhone, which comes out in 07, everyone has got those flip phones. So we have mobile. It's not like a completely... So we have some robots around us already, but it's like, okay, so when are we going to... And you asked me in 2006, "When are we going to get that Star Trek phone that can do everything?" And I think at that time, I would say, because I don't even know the iPhone is coming a year later, I would say, "Well, Lenny, I don't know. Maybe it's one to five years." And if it's not five years later that Uber, WhatsApp, Instagram, Snapchat are all products and they're being consumed by many, many, many millions of people. So what happens when you think about sitting in 2006 and why can't your brain figure out that Instagram is coming? Instagram is very hard to even conceive without phones that have an app store, have cameras on both sides are available, generally available that lots of people have it. And the fact that people are comfortable being on social networks. In 2006, it's still an early thing. This is pre-Twitter and Facebook is not that big and MySpace is, but it's not the same type of private kind of communication. And so the point I'm making is I think it can come pretty fast, but the way and the form factor will come is hard to pick just like it's hard to figure out Instagram's going to happen because the intelligence in that particular type of hardware, which will be generally available, that's a keyword, generally available, is really going to impact the use cases. So I think 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 the reason is all that, let's say engineering required to make this giant machine that moves dirt has already been done. It's been done over the last 50, 60 years. So then you're just putting a little bit of intelligence into it and leveraging everything else that the companies and people have developed. So I think, and I'm not just pitching my own book. I mean, we're a physical AI company. I continue to believe that I think our brain emotionally loves the humanoid concept because we're monkeys. oped. So I think, and I'm not just pitching my own book. I mean, we're a physical AI company. I continue to believe that I think our brain emotionally loves the humanoid concept because we're monkeys. But actually, just more pragmatically, it's actually just putting intelligence into things that already exist all around us. And then once that happens, then new applications will emerge, which I think we'll talk about in five to seven years, which we'll start seeing. So let's just move forward five to seven years and let's see what reality exists. And then maybe we can try to jump into the future from there. I think generally speaking, 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. Many, many companies are working in versions of that that become fully autonomous within a cheap sensor suite. So the fundamental difference, just to simplify it all, the Tesla approach versus the Waymo approach, just to really keep it simple, is the Waymo approach is lots of sensors and lots of compute and maps. And the Tesla version is very few sensors, no maps, no high fidelity maps and just generalizing here and cheaper compete for the lack of better word. And the Tesla version of a product, this is in the industry is called an L2++ product, is going to be available everywhere because it's literally cheaper and it doesn't require HD maps. The Waymo product functions better in a geographically constrained area. So you fast forward five years, both of these types of technologies will be much more ubiquitous. L2++ and L4 will be much more ubiquitous, not only in the Bay Area or in parts of China, but really globally. There are companies working on this globally. So now, I don't know if you remember, but NAV systems used to be a big deal in cars. You would pay thousands of dollars and NAV systems were kind of the thing that everybody wanted. We're at that moment for L2++ systems where people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for a semi-automated vehicle. 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 level of autonomy. So now you have to mentally live in that reality that everybody who's buying a car, they just get FSD with it. Now you start seeing a different world because now the average person isn't wondering is self-driving in a car. They use it all the time. They don't wonder, are NAVs... And so what you have in NAV systems is a CarPlay emerges and Android Auto emerges, and it's very natural. People are like, "Oh, I have my phone. I just plug it in." And it wasn't a big revolution, but the CarPlay and Android Auto revolution is actually huge. It brings free navigation and free applications to your car and it's fairly ubiquitous. And so I think the next thing that happens in five to seven years is then full autonomy becomes the thing that everyone expects. avigation and free applications to your car and it's fairly ubiquitous. And so I think the next thing that happens in five to seven years is then full autonomy becomes the thing that everyone expects. And so I think all of that, and you will see a clear decrease in injuries and death because of that, because you have some intelligence helping you, help you drive. Now, again, I'm using the consumer of vehicle analogies just so people can understand it, but this is the same in construction. It's the same in mining. It's the same in defense. It's in every one of these verticals. There's these big physical machines that humans are interacting with. That teaming up with that machine is the future. The productivity unlock from just you looking at a machine, not like a sentient being, but almost like a physical agent of something you're trying to accomplish, unlocks things that I think are very hard to think about. So I love things like Moltbook and I love, let's say, OpenClaw revolution that's happening for the lack of a better word, but I think the big impact, that's still such a small part of society. My barometer of impact is like you go to the Detroit airport and you sit in a gate and you look around and you're like, how many people here are using OpenClaw? And it's like, let me look into like, you might be the only person who knows what that is. And whereas everybody, they're living their lives there. And so it's like to them, actually the impact of AI is going to be in this physical world. I see you also have a... Yeah, there you go.…
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