Applied Intuition Fields Offers at $30 Billion Valuation

For the last three years, AI labs like OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI have sucked up a lot of investor attention—as well as nosebleed valuations. Now a growing number of startups that make apps, agents or other software powered by AI are fetching valuations of $20 billion or higher.

Applied Intuition, a maker of software to train self-driving vehicles, is slated to join this club. Applied Intuition has received investment offers that would value it at least $30 billion, according to people who have spoken to company leaders. The offers are likely to encourage the company to raise at least $1 billion in the next few months, they said.

A valuation at that level would double its June valuation and validate the nine-year-old company’s decision to focus on the software component of self-driving—rather than building and operating the cars as well. At the end of 2024, it was generating $400 million in annual recurring revenue, and it has doubled its revenue every year in recent years, investor Andreessen Horowitz said in July.

The new funding would also expand the ranks of high-valued startups worth tens of billions. These include coding agent Cognition and Perplexity.

Founded by Qasar Younis, former chief operating officer of Y Combinator, and Peter Ludwig, a former Google product manager, Applied Intuition sells software to develop, test and validate advanced driver-assistance and automated driving systems, as well as operating systems for vehicles. It counts Japan’s Isuzu, which uses its software to operate self-driving heavy trucks, as well as Volkswagen and Saudi Arabia’s Humain as customers.

It has been expanding into supplying tech for autonomous military vehicles, setting it up for competition with defense tech startups Anduril and Saronic. This summer it launched an AI agent tool, Dana, which employees can use to automate the development of systems for physical AI and software-controlled vehicles. And last week, it announced deals to supply vehicle operating systems and other technology to Honda and Nissan.

The success of Google’s Waymo, which has expanded its commercial operation across the U.S., is also encouraging investors to back self-driving car startups.

The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Applied Intuition has raised $1.2 billion from investors including Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lux Capital, Kleiner Perkins and others. It hasn’t used most of it, Andreessen Horowitz said in July.