Qasar Younis is a

Pakistani American Pakistani Americans () are citizens of the United States who have full or partial ancestry from Pakistan, or more simply, Pakistanis in America. They can be from different ethnic groups in Pakistan like Punjabi or Muhajir. The term may also re ...

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value in ways that generally entail beyond the minimal amount of risk (assumed by a traditional business), and potentially involving values besides simply economic ones. An entreprene ...

and

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

ist, and the CEO of

Applied Intuition Applied Intuition is an American software company specializing in building artificial intelligence (AI) technologies and advanced software for vehicle manufacturers. Founded in 2017 and based in Mountain View, California, Applied Intuition devel ...

, a technology company that builds AI and advanced software for vehicle manufactures. Prior to Applied Intuition, he was the COO of

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

during

Sam Altman Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American technology entrepreneur, investor, and the chief executive officer of OpenAI since 2019 (he was Removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI, briefly dismissed and reinstated in November 2023). He ...

’s tenure as President. He was also the co-founder and CEO of Talkbin ( acquired by Google).

Early life and education

Younis was born on a farm in

Pakistan Pakistan, officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, fifth-most populous country, with a population of over 241.5 million, having the Islam by country# ...

, and emigrated to the United States in 1988. He grew up in the Detroit area. After graduating with an engineering degree from

Kettering University Kettering University is a private university in Flint, Michigan. It offers Bachelor of Science, bachelor of science and master's degree, master’s degrees in Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, STEM (science, technology, engineer ...

, he then went on to complete his MBA at

Harvard Business School Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate school, graduate business school of Harvard University, a Private university, private Ivy League research university. Located in Allston, Massachusetts, HBS owns Harvard Business Publishing, which p ...

Career

Younis started his career as an engineer at

General Motors General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...

and then Bosch in Japan. After completing his MBA at Harvard Business School, he started Cameesa.com. In 2010, he moved to the San Francisco bay area to start his second startup, TalkBin, a platform for customers to send messages to businesses. The company graduated from

and was acquired by Google in 2011. After the acquisition, Younis joined Google for 3.5 years as a product lead on Google Maps.

Y Combinator

After the TalkBin acquisition, Younis continued advising other startups, particularly through Y Combinator. In early 2013, he became a part-time partner at YC. In early 2014, he became a partner at Y Combinator. In 2015 he was promoted to COO. In his time at Y Combinator, the firm invested in

OpenAI OpenAI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines ...

, Cruise,

Scale AI Scale AI, Inc. is an American data annotation company based in San Francisco, California. It provides data labeling and model evaluation services to develop applications for artificial intelligence. The company’s research arm, the Safety, E ...

DoorDash DoorDash, Inc. is an American company operating online food ordering and food delivery. It trades under the symbol DASH. With a 56% market share, DoorDash is the largest food delivery platform in the United States. It also has a 60% market sha ...

GitLab GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...

Coinbase Coinbase Global, Inc. is an American cryptocurrency exchange. It was founded in 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsam. Coinbase has over 100 million users, and is the largest U.S. based cryptocurrency exchange as well as the world's bigge ...

Flexport Flexport Inc. is an American multinational corporation that focuses on supply chain management and logistics, including order management, delivery, trade financing, insurance, freight forwarding, and customs brokerage. The company is headquarte ...

, Checkr, and others. He also helped start and create some of the most important initiatives inside the accelerator including raising the $700m Continuity Fund, starting the software team, and creating Investor Day.

Applied Intuition

In January 2017, Younis started

, along with co-founder Peter Ludwig, a former Google product manager and software engineer and an engineering graduate of the

University of Michigan The University of Michigan (U-M, U of M, or Michigan) is a public university, public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest institution of higher education in the state. The University of Mi ...

Marc Andreessen Marc Lowell Andreessen ( ; born July 9, 1971) is an American businessman and former software engineer. He is the co-author of Mosaic, the first widely used web browser with a graphical user interface; co-founder of Netscape; and co-founder and ...

joined also as a board member in 2017. Applied Intuition builds software tooling to support the development of autonomous vehicles, and cites work with 18 of the 20 largest global OEMs, autonomy startups, and defense companies to accelerate autonomy programs. Applied Intuition is currently valued at $15 billion following a $600 million Series F and tender offer announced in June 2025. The funding was co-led by BlackRock-managed funds and Kleiner Perkins, with new investors including Franklin Templeton and Qatar Investment Authority. This represents an increase from the company's previous $6 billion valuation in 2024. Investors include

Andreessen Horowitz AH Capital Management, LLC (commonly known as Andreessen Horowitz, or a16z) is an American privately held venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of M ...

Fidelity Fidelity is the quality of faithfulness or loyalty. Its original meaning regarded duty in a broader sense than the related concept of '' fealty''. Both derive from the Latin word , meaning "faithful or loyal". In the City of London financial m ...

Lux Capital Lux Capital is a venture capital firm based in New York City. It was founded in 2000, and focuses on investments in emerging technologies. History Lux Capital was founded in 2000 by Peter Hébert, Robert Paull and Josh Wolfe. In April 2011, for ...

General Catalyst General Catalyst (GC) is a global investment and transformation company that makes seed to growth stage investments and beyond. The firm has invested in 800+ businesses, including global companies such as Airbnb, Anduril Industries, Applied In ...

Ray Dalio Raymond Thomas Dalio (born August 8, 1949) is an American billionaire and hedge-fund manager, who has been co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates since 1985. He founded Bridgewater in 1975 in New York. Dalio was born in New York ...

Henry Kravis Henry Roberts Kravis (born January 6, 1944) is an American businessman, investor, and philanthropist.Mary Meeker use both this parameter and , birth_date to display the person's date of birth, date of death, and age at death) --> , death_place = , death_cause = , nationality = , citizenship = , education = DePau ...

Reid Hoffman Reid Garrett Hoffman (born August 5, 1967) is an American internet entrepreneur, venture capitalist, podcaster, and author. Hoffman is the co-founder and former executive chairman of LinkedIn, a business-oriented social network used primarily ...

, and

Mustafa Suleyman Mustafa Suleyman (born 1984) is a British artificial intelligence (AI) entrepreneur. He is the CEO of Microsoft AI, and the co-founder and former head of applied AI at DeepMind, an AI company acquired by Google. After leaving DeepMind, he co-fou ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Younis, Qasar American chief executives in the automobile industry American technology chief executives American computer businesspeople Businesspeople in software Living people Place of birth missing (living people) Harvard Business School alumni Y Combinator people American chief operating officers Kettering University alumni American people of Pakistani descent Year of birth missing (living people)