One of Nvidia’s fundamental breakthroughs has involved processors that power detailed, compute-intensive graphical simulations that can be used for everything from games and industrial development to AI training. Now, two of the engineers who helped build those physical simulations for Nvidia have raised a sizable amount of seed funding for their new startup.
Manchester-based Vsim is developing a new physics simulation framework, and has raised $21.5 million from EQT Ventures and a number of backers. Vsim had previously raised around $1.4 million, bringing its total funding raised to $24 million. This latest investment has been rumored for a bit and values the company at around $100 million valuation.
Factorial Fund, Samsung Next, Tru Arrow, Xora (a Temasek subsidiary), IQ Capital, Koro Capital, Concept Ventures, Lakestar Scout Fund and Carles Reina also participated in the round.
Vsim has been operating in stealth so far, so there is not a lot of evidence of its product just yet. Michelle Lu, who co-founded the startup with Kier Storey, told TechCrunch that they are initially targeting opportunities in robotics training.
However, the tech might be able to do far more than that. One of the key reasons why Vsim has raised a bigger-than-usual seed round is because what it is building has the potential to be used for a lot more.
While simulation technology has been around for years, improvements in processing power are leading to more efficient algorithms, as well as tooling aimed at more specific applications — that’s the opportunity Vsim is targeting.
Lu and Storey are not just the co-founders of Vsim; they are also a couple and have been working side-by-side for nearly two decades, going back to their days as physics students at Newcastle University.
The pair’s first foray into startup life was a short-lived effort when they were fresh out of their PhD program. That company might have had the right talent and ideas but it came at the wrong time, and maybe the wrong place, too: It was 2007, and there was little money to be raised for startups building simulation technology in Northern England, even from promising PhDs.
So the two moved to a new pair of jobs, working for Bizarre Creations, a game studio based out of Manchester. Bizarre found some success and was acquired by Activision, and there they built physics engines for a number of titles. Activision eventually shut down Bizarre and the pair moved to Nvidia, where they worked as engineers focusing on building simulation technology for more than a decade.
Lu said that she and Storey have honed in on simulations for robotics as the first use-case because of a gap in the market: While robots have existed for years now, particularly in industrial settings, they now seem to be at an inflection point thanks to advances in processing, mechanics and AI.
“Back then, we were just some PhD graduates,” Lu said of their early efforts. “Now we have 20 years of experience and have talked to a lot of potential customers. That’s how we have found the target for our product.”
While companies like Nvidia are also building robotics simulations — the founders were doing a lot of work on exactly that at Nvidia — what Vsim is building takes that tech to a new level.
“The reason we’re excited about simulation is that it’s fundamental to a lot of different sectors, ranging from research to entertainment to manufacturing, pharma and robotics,” Sandra Malmberg, the partner at EQT Ventures who led the round, said in an interview.
Simulation tools today are built for a world with a limited degree of freedom and for fixed environments, but as ambitions for applications grow, robots (and other autonomous machines) will need to make decisions in real time and in the real world, which is dynamic and unpredictable.
“There is no simulation platform for that today,” Malmberg said. “This calls for a high-performance simulation where you can act with speed, in real time, with accuracy, taking the room and the world into consideration. And this is what Vsim is building. They can enable robots initially, and later, they will do more.”