The Future Belongs to Builders
Qasar Younis on the next era of risk, opportunity, and engineering.
“Find where the tectonic plates are shifting and stand on the fault line. That is where the most profound opportunities are.”
That was one of the central messages Applied Intuition CEO Qasar Younis delivered to the 2026 graduating class of Kettering University this past weekend.
Returning to the school where he earned his engineering degree more than two decades ago—and where he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Engineering during the ceremony—Younis reflected on a series of decisions that fundamentally altered the course of his life. From leaving Michigan for Silicon Valley to embracing technological change during the rise of the internet and helping build one of the world's leading physical AI companies, his career has been shaped by a willingness to move toward uncertainty rather than away from it.
The advice was particularly relevant for graduates entering the workforce amid the rise of artificial intelligence. While the technology may be different, Younis noted that the feeling is familiar. When he graduated from Kettering in 2004, the internet was triggering many of the same hopes, fears, and questions about the future of work.
“This is why I am like you,” Younis told the assembled graduates. “And whether you realize it today or not, you are like me.”
Here are five other lessons from Younis’s address.
Younis recalled that most of the key decisions in his life came shortly after his own graduation, a time of uncertainty following September 11 and the technological upheaval of the early internet era. That uncertainty is precisely what makes these moments of volatility the best time for graduates to seek out opportunities.
“You have less to lose now than you will ever have again, and therefore more to gain now than you will ever have again,” Younis said.
At the time of his own graduation from Kettering, the internet seemed to be consuming the entire economy, including the automotive industry that Younis had grown up around in Detroit.
“But rather than run from the event horizon, I ran toward it,” Younis said. “Do not seek a safe professional harbor.”
When Younis left the Midwest, where he grew up, for California, he did it because he knew that he needed to surround himself with the people and businesses that were poised to grow in the years ahead.
“Go to the heart of the industry you want to spend your life in, even if it means uprooting your life,” he said. “If you want to succeed in an industry, you can’t be on the periphery. You need to work with and learn from the people who are the best in that domain.”
The last thing you should do, Younis said, is follow somebody else’s path because it seems like it might be easier.
Younis recalled that, when he was younger, he devoured autobiographies, hoping to find some wisdom that might unlock the secret to success. But what he ultimately learned is that success looks different for everyone.
“Up to this point your life has been swimming in very specific, well-defined lanes. But today, you are being thrown into the vast ocean of adulthood,” Younis said. “And adulthood is very undefined.”
Growing up as the child of immigrants, Younis was wary of depending on others. That made him uniquely well-suited to entrepreneurship.
“Where my classmates saw risk in starting a business, I saw risk in staying at a company. Where my classmates saw risk in an unknown land, I saw risk in my hometown.”
But it’s not always easy to find clarity and self-knowledge in that vast ocean of adulthood. “You cannot find your path by following the expectations that were placed on you,” Younis said. “And you certainly cannot live your life by tracing the footsteps of others.”
One of the more personal moments in the address came when Younis spoke about his long-standing skepticism of established institutions and concentrated power.
As a student at Kettering, he watched economic upheaval reshape many of the communities around him. It left him with a healthy skepticism toward the idea that existing systems and those in power always had the right answers.
That skepticism, he told graduates, is something to embrace.
“If you are unhappy with how [AI] is being made and used, it is up to you to fix it,” Younis told graduates. “You have a role to play in determining how society shifts and adapts to this technology. If you see companies abusing us, stealing our data, stealing our attention, robbing us of our agency, do not work for them. Build the alternative.”
Before Younis left the stage, he told the gathered graduates that he was handing them the torch. What they chose to do with it was now up to them.
“Right now, at this moment in your life, you are never more free to choose what you want to do and where you want to do it,” said Younis. “Thanks to your education, you are more prepared than most to determine your own destiny and your role in technological transformation.”
“Throughout history, the masters of civilization, those determining the road ahead, are the ones who build. And so the masters of our modern civilization are engineers.You are the ones who create machines. And those machines are going to define our civilization.”
