Applied Intuition wants AI to leave the chat and run the physical world

• Applied Intuition hosted a Physical AI day highlighting its ambitions and challenges.
• Marc Andreessen said that the "practical reality of existing in the world" is a challenge for AI.
• Applied Intuition is making a lofty pitch to automate mining and logistics.

A Bay Area startup company wants AI to leave the chat and run the physical world.

Applied Intuition, a Silicon Valley software company that develops autonomous systems, hosted Physical AI Day last week to demonstrate the potential of automating mines, farms, and trucks.

Unlike an AI agent that lives entirely online, Applied Intuition is adding its software to existing machinery that has to navigate the real world. The challenge? The machines need to operate in environments with high levels of uncertainty, such as hundreds of miles of freeway, a growing field or crops, or an underground mining site.

Marc Andreessen, general partner at Andreessen Horowitz and an early backer of Applied Intuition, spoke at Physical AI Day and talked about both the potential and pitfalls of the technology as companies try to bring bits to atoms.

In conversation with CEO Qasar Younis and CTO Peter Ludwig, Andreessen said the AI revolution comes in two waves: "the virtual wave and the physical wave."

"The virtual wave is much easier to explain — you only need the keyboard," Andreessen said. "But the world is built for physical experience for people. How do you build a humanoid to fit into that environment?"

Andreessen said he once bought his child a robot dog made by a Chinese company, only to realize that it weighed 150 pounds, needed to be held up by a rack when idle, and was simply not safe for children should it fall over.

"The practical reality of existing in the world is a completely different thing," said Andreessen.

'The easy wins are taken'

Applied Intuition started out as a software company in 2017 for simulation and infrastructure tools for autonomous vehicles. It reached a $15 billion valuation in June 2025 after gaining contracts with the US military and global automakers and has set the lofty goal of bringing autonomy to agriculture and mining, as well as to private passenger cars.

"There is no version of the future where more human labor is the answer," said Joe Forcash, head of mining, construction, and agriculture at Applied Intuition, during a presentation.

Forcash added that some essential jobs in mining and farming are fundamentally undesirable due to the working conditions, but achieving automation is also challenging because of the often unpredictable, constantly changing surroundings during these tasks.

Instead of developing hardware themselves from scratch, Applied Intuition partners with existing trucking and mining equipment companies like Komatsu and Isuzu and adapts its software to their hardware. On Monday, large excavators and trucks stood tall within the Physical AI Day event venue but mostly remained stationary.

Malhar Patel, deputy CTO of Applied Intuition, called the physical world AI's "biggest opportunity and gap" during his presentation and said that the easy wins in AI are already taken.

"All the harder applications, such as machinery, are barely touched," said Patel. "The most valuable companies in the world operate in atoms, not bits. It is fundamentally hard to do something physical."

"The companies that understand demands win, not who builds the best models," Patel added. "The real world is a lot bigger than the Bay Area."

In Japan, the company has recently deployed its second-generation autonomous Isuzu trucks for freight operations on a nearly 250-mile route. Masanori Katayama, CEO of Isuzu Motors, has called autonomous trucking "critical" for the future of logistics in Japan due to the country's driver shortage.

Challenges in physical AI aside, Applied Intuition also wants you to know that it isn't trying to take the fun out of being on the road.

"Don't worry," said said Vijaysai Patnaik, general manager of Applied Intuition. "In the future, when your kids make a honking gesture on the highway, our intelligent truck will still honk back."