Autonomous physical systems are not limited to robo-taxis and humanoids; the biggest unlocks are in the 'nooks and crannies'—ports, mines, quarries, agriculture, and defense—where labor shortages and safety concerns create urgent demand.
Most people fixate on robo-taxis and humanoids, but the real near-term impact is in industrial settings like ports, mines, and farms where labor is scarce and demand is massive. ✦ AI generated
Speaker 1 (Qasar Younis) · a16z Podcast · 2026-07-21 · original ↗
starts at this moment · 11:00
“So, what's the like how should people think about like how many things are there that are things that move where the idea of physical AI physical intelligence are going to matter?”
I think a lot of times people think about the progress in physical AI is limited to basically two case uses and they're just obvious and interesting which is robo taxis and humanoids. They're very visceral. They excite you and they're kind of sci-fi. I think all the other domains are going to be just as important. I mean, you just think about what happens on a port. That's a huge unlock there. And that's the area we're really focused on. It's like all the other nooks and crannies.
verbatim transcript · starts at 11:00
10:40AI and more so into where where are we today what progress has has made what are some of the main major bottlenecks in physical AI when you unpack some of that >> yeah I mean I think a lot of times people think about the progress in physical AI is limited to basically two case use cases and they're just cuz they're obvious and interesting which is robo taxes and humanoids. Um they're
11:01very visceral. They're they're they excite you and they're kind of sci-fi. Um I think they're those are very interesting. Uh and they there is real work being done by us and other people in in those domains. I think all the other uh all the other domains I think are going to be just as important. I mean, you just you just think about what happens on a port. That's there's a huge
11:23unlock there. Um, and that's I think that's the that's the area we're we're we're really focused on. It's like all the other nooks and crannies. If you look at like we we've talked before about uh the rise of Cisco and how you know networking kind of went from you know first individual machines and companies would get network and then entire countries are getting network. There's a similar thing happening with
11:43AI. AI's getting to that level of kind of sovereign AI is now a discussion. Sovereign AI really is about physical AI because that's where you're talking about AI in defense. You're talking about AI in the physical machines that are moving around. If you look just at the example of of uh Whimo from America and Pony from China trying to deploy in let's say the other countries, so not
12:07America, not Europe, not China. every one of those uh spaces, they're way more uh they're way more hesitant of saying, "Yeah, thumbs up. Your robo taxis can run unfettered on our in our uh country." And so, if you look back just at kind of this arc of the internet, you know, when the first internet companies come, nobody's really think about sovereignty at all. It's like the browser goes everywhere, the internet