Vsim, founded by ex-Nvidia duo, raises $21.5M

Simulation startup Vsim has raised $21.5m in a seed round led by EQT Ventures with participation from Factorial Fund, Samsung Next, Tru Arrow, Xora (a fully owned subsidiary of Temasek), IQ Capital, Koro Capital, Concept Ventures, Lakestar Scout Fund, Carles Reina. This follows a pre-seed fundraise led by Concept ventures in 2023.

Co-founded in 2022 and led by Michelle Lu, CEO, and Kier Storey, CTO, Vsim benefits from its founders’ 20 years of experience in physics simulation that include over a decade each in Nvidia's simulation technology team, developing open-source physics engines.

Vsim’s solution utilizes new algorithms that leverage multi-core hardware architectures to accelerate physics simulations for companies in a wide range of industries including robotics, Visual FX, aerodynamics for planes & vehicles, gaming, and e-commerce, amongst others.

The technology seeks to solve two major problems with existing solutions in the market. Firstly, the speed at which companies are able to complete trainings through simulations; Vsim allows simulations in minutes instead of days without compromising on quality. And secondly, the difficulty in scaling and customizing frameworks to accommodate the need to deploy the technology across a diversity of use cases.

Through research by its two co-founders, Vsim has developed a flexible framework offering users a versatile platform underpinned by its high-performance, high accuracy physics simulator that enables rapid customization and the development of new models to support specialist use cases. This allows users across sectors to easily craft high-performance custom simulations to meet their specific requirements with minimal engineering efforts.

Vsim has expanded its technology stack beyond simulation and has built an end-to-end reinforcement training framework on top of its physics simulator. This provides up to 100x training performance speed-up compared to the existing solutions in the market. With this significant funding, Vsim is deploying new resources to expand its offering to develop full-stack software solutions tailored to robotics.

Michelle Lu, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Vsim, commented:“We are thrilled to announce our seed funding round led by EQT Ventures, which represents a significant milestone in our development. This will provide us with further resources and support to deliver on our mission to empower companies to accelerate and optimize their AI trainings and ultimately, transform the field of robotics simulation. EQT Ventures were an obvious choice of partner for us - they share the challenger mentality that is at Vsim’s core and our passion of supporting businesses to grow with cutting edge technology solutions.”

Sandra Malmberg, Partner at EQT Ventures, added: “Physics simulation is fundamental to many sectors, such as research, manufacturing, and robotics. With decades of expertise in physics simulation technology, Michelle and Kier have built a solution that offers 100x performance for the fraction of the cost, helping users achieve breakthroughs in their fields.”