We are happy to announce Applied Intuition’s $250 million Series E financing round, led by Bilal Zuberi at Lux Capital (Series C lead investor), Elad Gil (Series D lead investor), and strategic investor Porsche Investments Management S.A. representing the well-known successful sports car manufacturer from Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. Beyond these key investors, we are announcing new and existing investments from Andreessen Horowitz (Series A lead investor), General Catalyst (Series B lead investor), Mary Meeker at BOND, Henry Kravis, Mustafa Suleyman (Founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI), Ray Dalio, Reid Hoffman, John Quinn, and Nico Rosberg.

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$1 billion to invest

Applied Intuition was founded in 2017 with the mission to accelerate the world’s adoption of safe and intelligent machines. Since then, we have maintained sustainable triple-digit percentage growth year-over-year and have done so profitably. Our team has expanded beyond its Silicon Valley roots to Detroit, Washington, D.C., Germany, Korea, and Japan, serving customers worldwide across the automotive, trucking, construction, mining, and agriculture industries. Our defense business has grown rapidly through ongoing projects with the U.S. Army and Air Force. Thanks to the strong business growth across these segments, our company is valued at $6 billion today, with $1 billion to invest toward our products.

Generative AI in the automotive industry

LLMs and other new AI models are beginning to transform the automotive and autonomy industries just as they are transforming industries such as customer support and content creation. Benefits include improved system performance, accelerated developer productivity, and superior operator experiences. Applied Intuition has been at the forefront of this transformation—for example, our products for synthetic data generation and data mining empower data-driven model development. With this investment, we will not only expand our tools that accelerate our customers’ development and production deployment of generative AI but also develop our own generative models to advance the automotive and autonomy industries.

“Applied Intuition benefits from generational megatrends including generative AI, autonomous systems, and software-defined vehicles. It is no wonder the company has built a scalable business and become an indispensable partner to top automotive OEMs and the U.S. military,” said Bilal Zuberi, General Partner at Lux Capital. “Applied Intuition is at the forefront of the AI revolution to transform the global transportation industry, and we are excited by its growth and distinctive position in the market. The best evidence is our enthusiasm to invest in every opportunity in the company’s history.”

Growing our team and products

Beyond doubling down on AI, computing, and data infrastructure, Applied Intuition will use the new capital to continue hiring the world’s best software and machine learning engineers. We will also expand our existing product portfolio, enabling our customers to bring the world’s most advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) and automated driving (AD) solutions to market.

“Within the last few years, we’ve seen massive advances in artificial intelligence that will have groundbreaking impacts on the industries that Applied Intuition serves. Our role as a leader in the ecosystem is to bring the best of what Silicon Valley has to offer to our global customer base,” said Qasar Younis, Co-Founder and CEO of Applied Intuition. “Our industry-leading vehicle software products will infuse AI technology to expand beyond our definitive ADAS and AD toolchain, which will exponentially accelerate the production of next-generation vehicles.”

Deepening a strategic relationship

With careful consideration, we have decided to bring on Porsche as our first OEM investor. “More than ever, consumers expect exclusive and seamless software integration in their cars,” said Lutz Meschke, CFO at Porsche AG. “With this strategic investment and partnership we want to further strengthen Porsche’s expertise in the field of software and customer experience.”

We are incredibly excited to partner more deeply with Porsche. We also want to take this opportunity to say that Porsche’s investment is a sign of commitment to Applied Intuition’s growing business. For the avoidance of doubt, as an investor in Applied Intuition, Porsche does not receive any information about other Applied Intuition customers. Both companies are committed to the fact that a fully independent software supplier is a huge positive for the industries we work in.

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The valuation takes care of itself

Applied Intuition’s success has been due to our focus on developing some of the most advanced technologies in our industry and efficient execution to deliver industry-leading products for our customers. Joe Montana is an early investor in Applied Intuition and was coached by the legendary Bill Walsh. Walsh wrote a book about the San Francisco 49ers and their dominance in his era, titled “The Score Takes Care of Itself.” This book contains the important principle that “there is no formula for success, rather it all comes down to intelligently and relentlessly seeking solutions that will increase your chance of prevailing.” Or, more concisely: “Culture precedes positive results.” If you do the day-to-day right, the valuation takes care of itself. 

And last but not least, we’re hiring! Come join us.

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Read more about the announcement

• Reuters: “Vehicle software maker Applied Intuition raises $250 mln from Porsche, others”
• TechCrunch: “Applied Intuition lands $6B valuation for AI-powered autonomous vehicle software”
• Bilal Zuberi (Lux Capital) via Medium: “Driving Transformation with Software and AI: Q&A with Applied Intuition’s Qasar Younis“
• General Catalyst: “Our Investment in Applied Intuition”