Applied Intuition just raised a $250 million Series E funding round, valuing the simulation company at $6 billion. Many people have observed that in a gold rush, the most valuable business is selling picks and shovels. Applied Intuition fits that bill – they tout that 18 of the top 20 automakers in the world world work with them.
Most autonomous vehicle companies that I have seen have several different types of simulations:
- Video-game like simulations that look realistic but more expensive to run
- Playback of logged data from the real-world
- Hypothetical “synthetic” situations
- High-fidelity physics simulation
Often there are other types of simulation, as well.
An advantage of working with Applied, as Kodiak does, is the commonality between these scenarios. Since a single company is developing all of these engines, with a product team to coordinate, the simulation products overlap closely. As an engineering customer, this is a big benefit.
David Silver 