Vsim

Vsim was founded in Manchester in 2022 by Michelle Lu and Kier Storey, both former Nvidia simulation engineers with over two decades of combined experience in physics simulation. The company was born from a clear insight: existing simulation tools were built for a limited degree of freedom and fixed environments, but the robotics industry — and broader applications in AI, visual effects, aerodynamics, gaming, and e-commerce — increasingly required real-time, high-accuracy simulations in dynamic, unpredictable environments. Legacy simulators struggled with performance at scale (bottlenecking at around 10,000 entities), traded accuracy for speed, and were difficult to customise without deep technical knowledge. Vsim was built to solve all three problems.

At the core of Vsim is a novel multi-physics simulation engine using new algorithms that leverage multi-core hardware architectures to accelerate physics simulations dramatically. On top of this engine, Vsim has built an end-to-end reinforcement learning training framework, offering up to 100x training performance speed-up compared to existing solutions. The platform enables companies to complete simulations in minutes rather than days without sacrificing quality, and its flexible framework allows rapid customisation and development of new models. Initially targeting robotics training, Vsim is building out a full-stack robotic platform (Vlab) that includes authoring tools for environments and robots, simulation, and inference, with integration into Unreal Engine 5.

Vsim raised $21.5 million in seed funding in September 2024, led by EQT Ventures with participation from Factorial Funds, Samsung Next, Tru Arrow, Xora (backed by Temasek), IQ Capital, Koro Capital, Concept Ventures, and Lakestar Scout Fund. The round values the company at approximately $100 million and follows a pre-seed raise led by Concept Ventures in late 2023. The funding will be used to grow the team and accelerate the development of Vsim's full-stack robotics solution.