Michelle Lu

Michelle Lu is a physicist and software engineer who spent over a decade at Nvidia as Director of Simulation Technology, where she worked on some of the world's most advanced physics engines — including contributions to the PhysX and Isaac Gym simulation platforms. Before Nvidia, she worked as a physics and AI coder at Bizarre Creations, contributing to commercially released titles including Blur and 007: Blood Stone. She holds a PhD and began her career developing an in-house physics engine, Gravity, from scratch at Bizarre Creations. Her work at Nvidia deepened her expertise in high-performance simulation at scale and seeded the insight that would become Vsim.

In 2022, Michelle co-founded Vsim in Manchester alongside Kier Storey, channelling their combined two decades of physics simulation experience into a next-generation simulation framework for robotics and AI. As CEO, Michelle drives Vsim's commercial strategy and vision, positioning the company as the operating system for robotic simulation and training. Vsim's platform addresses critical bottlenecks in the industry — existing tools struggle to handle simulations of more than 10,000 entities, trade accuracy for speed, and cannot scale efficiently across cloud infrastructure. Vsim resolves all three, enabling users to complete simulations in minutes rather than days without compromising quality.

Vsim raised $21.5 million in seed funding in 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 funding values Vsim at approximately $100 million and will be used to grow the team and develop a full-stack robotics solution. Michelle has been recognised in Sifted's list of 14 people who mattered most in European tech in 2025.