Earlier this year, the transportation industry reached a significant milestone. The TRATON GROUP, one of the world’s leading commercial vehicle manufacturers, officially announced a strategic partnership with Silicon Valley-based vehicle software provider Applied Intuition.
This is not your typical startup-corporate collaboration. It’s a long-term, strategic relationship that spans across all TRATON GROUP brands including Scania, MAN Truck & Bus, International, and Volkswagen Truck & Bus. The partnership aims to deploy an industry-leading software-defined vehicle (SDV) platform for all TRATON GROUP brands globally, setting a new industry standard.
It All Started with a Pilot
This partnership traces back to 2019 when Applied Intuition was a young yet promising startup fresh off a $12M Series A round. Through Combient Foundry’s Venture Client approach, their team connected with Scania during the Value Proposition Days, just after Scania launched one of its first Venture Client business opportunities. The timing was ideal, and the connection was no coincidence, as the Foundry team had already identified Applied Intuition as a strong potential partner to work with.
The resulting pilot focused on simulation tools for autonomous vehicle development. At the time, Scania was actively seeking a best-in-class simulation platform, and Applied Intuition stood out with its modular, AI-powered software and professional execution. From the start, the Applied Intuition team also quickly recognized this wouldn’t be a typical vendor-client relationship. It was their first collaboration using the Venture Client model, and working with Scania and Foundry felt different: more strategic, more collaborative, and far from standard procurement.
“It was a seamless and highly professional process,” recalls Qasar Younis, Co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition. “I wish every company we engaged with had set up something like Combient Foundry.”
You can read more about that initial pilot project in our earlier blog post.
Scaling Up from One Brand to the Entire Group
The success of the Scania pilot laid the groundwork for something much bigger. Over the following years, Applied Intuition’s platform became a key enabler for Scania’s Autonomous Transport Solutions, thanks to its simulation-first approach and state-of-the-art tech stack.
Now, the collaboration is scaling across all TRATON GROUP brands. The new strategic partnership focuses on building a group-wide vehicle OS and developer toolchain, streamlining software development across the organization, and accelerating the shift to SDVs.
With Applied’s simulation platform and AI-powered tools, TRATON GROUP will be able to virtualize testing, develop faster, and deliver more value to customers faster than ever before.
“This partnership will accelerate TRATON’s technological leadership and enable us to develop full software-defined vehicle capabilities for all TRATON GROUP brands,”
says Niklas Klingenberg, Head of Group R&D at TRATON GROUP.
Seeding Scalable Innovation with Combient Foundry
The transportation sector is undergoing rapid digital transformation. As SDVs become the new standard, software excellence is no longer optional, it’s mission-critical.
Startups and scaleups like Applied Intuition are essential to this shift. Their speed, innovation, and product maturity help OEMs move fast without compromising safety or reliability.
At Combient Foundry, our mission is to connect large industrial companies with the best emerging tech solutions in the world. Applied Intuition was one of those rising stars we spotted early.
“That’s what makes good companies great: day-to-day execution, professionalism, and follow-through,”
Qasar reflects.
By leveraging our Venture Client model, we helped Applied Intuition validate its value swiftly inside the ecosystem in a real-world setting and gave Scania a clear, structured way to collaborate with cutting-edge technology.
This story is a strong validation of our “start small, scale fast” philosophy, one that turns promising pilots into long-term strategic partnerships that reshape industries.
A Shared Vision for the Road Ahead
What started as a pilot in 2019 on software tooling has grown into a full-scale strategic collaboration, grounded in technical excellence, mutual respect, and a shared vision for the future of mobility.
We couldn’t be prouder to have played a role in bringing these two exceptional organizations together. Congratulations to everyone at Applied Intuition and TRATON GROUP—this is just the beginning.
