--- title: "Skild AI open-sources its physics engine, up to 13 times faster than Nvidia's PhysX, in Nvidia's Newton" description: "Steel lands inside NVIDIA's open-source Newton engine and makes fast, mixed-robot simulation free for every rival, including NVIDIA's own GR00T 2 team. What Skild keeps, the brain and its factory deployments, carries a $14 billion valuation on revenue no filing has ever shown." publisher: "The Inference" section: "Robotics & Defense" published: 2026-11-11T00:04:49.581Z modified: 2026-11-11T00:04:49.581Z canonical: https://theinference.org/article/skild-ai-open-sources-its-physics-engine-up-to-13-times-faster-than-nvidia-s-physx-in-nvidia-s-newton language: en keywords: "Skild AI, Nvidia, Robotics, Open Source, Simulation" --- # Skild AI open-sources its physics engine, up to 13 times faster than Nvidia's PhysX, in Nvidia's Newton > Steel lands inside NVIDIA's open-source Newton engine and makes fast, mixed-robot simulation free for every rival, including NVIDIA's own GR00T 2 team. What Skild keeps, the brain and its factory deployments, carries a $14 billion valuation on revenue no filing has ever shown. On November 9 at the Conference on Robot Learning (CoRL) in Austin, [Skild AI](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/skild-ai) [put its Steel physics solver into NVIDIA's open-source Newton engine under an Apache license](https://skild.ai/blogs/steel), the same day [NVIDIA launched its own robot brain, GR00T 2](https://theinference.org/article/black-forest-labs-tops-nvidia-s-own-robot-benchmark-days-before-germany-s-nvidia-summit) [1][2][3]. Skild measures Steel at up to thirteen times PhysX's throughput on mixed robot batches, a simulation figure, not training speed [1]. The brain Skild keeps is valued at $14 billion, on revenue no filing has shown [4]. ## The speedup is biggest exactly where general brains train GPU physics engines earn their speed by replicating one scene thousands of times [1]. A general-purpose brain needs the opposite: arms, dexterous hands, humanoids and quadrupeds practising different tasks in one batch, and engines waste work padding unlike scenes into a common shape [1]. Steel sizes work per environment and groups similar mechanisms, so its edge is narrow on identical tasks and widens as batches mix [1]. Skild's own account of its data engine rates simulation as cheap to scale but thin in diversity; Steel is built for exactly that cell [1][7]. *Chart: **Steel's lead over PhysX widens as the training batch mixes more kinds of work** Column chart of Steel's simulation throughput advantage over PhysX, rising from 3.8 times on identical tasks to 13 times when a batch mixes 20 task types.* *Peak simulation throughput of Steel relative to PhysX, simulation-only, each engine at its best measured batch size, on one RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPU; the first bar is a geometric mean over 20 single-task benchmarks. Source: Skild AI, Steel release, November 2026. [1]* ## NVIDIA holds every seat at this table Steel was built in collaboration with [NVIDIA](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/nvidia) [1]. NVentures, NVIDIA's venture arm, owns Skild stock alongside SoftBank, Samsung and LG [6]. Newton and Isaac Lab host Skild's training and now ship its solver [1][3]. By chief executive Deepak Pathak's account, a Blackwell assembly line at NVIDIA's Houston plant has run Skild's system since June, from first data to a working line inside a week on unchanged equipment [4]. GR00T 2, the rival brain, [claims up to 2.5 times the training throughput of NVIDIA's previous framework](https://www.therobotreport.com/nvidia-launches-gr00t-2-isaac-lab-3-0-corl/) [3]. Every outcome pays NVIDIA: the platform, the rival model, the stake. ## The revenue receipt is one trade article More than $100 million in annual recurring revenue and 60-plus paying customers, figures stated as of September 2026, come from [a single trade article published on November 4](https://aimagazine.com/news/skild-ai-omni-bodied-robot-brain-passes-us-100m-arr) [5]. Skild's own [January funding release claimed about $30 million of 2025 revenue](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260114335623/en/Skild-AI-Raises-%241.4B-Now-Valued-Over-%2414B) [6]. [In Seoul on November 10, Pathak confirmed deployments](https://en.sedaily.com/business/2026/11/10/skild-ai-founder-seeks-deeper-ties-with-korean-robot), the NVIDIA line, an LG battery plant and a warehouse run by Market Kurly, a Korean online-grocery firm, without putting a revenue number on any of them [4]. LG is shareholder, customer and suitor at once: it signed a physical-AI MOU with NVIDIA in August, and its chairman met [Microsoft](https://theinference.org/markets/companies/microsoft)'s chief executive on physical AI in September [8]. Freeing the physics layer is the right bet for the field: varied, cheap simulation speeds robot learning for everyone, and Pathak expects robots spreading through factories within the next year or two [4]. Three receipts would settle the wager: a filing or audited customer count behind the $100 million, the first rival brain trained on Steel, and GR00T 2 deployments set against Skild's factory lines [4]. Any one of them tells investors more than another benchmark win. ## Takeaway Skild AI gave away Steel, a physics solver up to 13 times faster than PhysX on mixed robot batches, inside NVIDIA's Newton engine, while its $14 billion valuation still rests on revenue claims no filing has shown. ## Sources 1. [Skild AI, Steel: Scaling Simulation Across Robots, Tasks, and Worlds, November 2026](https://skild.ai/blogs/steel) 2. [The Defiant, Skild AI Open-Sources Steel Physics Solver for Robot Training, 10 November 2026](https://thedefiant.io/frontier/technology/skild-ai-open-sources-steel-physics-solver-for-robot-training) 3. [The Robot Report, NVIDIA launches GR00T 2 and Isaac Lab 3.0 at CoRL, November 2026](https://www.therobotreport.com/nvidia-launches-gr00t-2-isaac-lab-3-0-corl/) 4. [Seoul Economic Daily, Skild AI Founder Seeks Deeper Ties With Korean Robot Hardware Makers, 10 November 2026](https://en.sedaily.com/business/2026/11/10/skild-ai-founder-seeks-deeper-ties-with-korean-robot) 5. [AI Magazine, Skild AI: Omni-Bodied Robot Brain Passes US$100m ARR, 4 November 2026](https://aimagazine.com/news/skild-ai-omni-bodied-robot-brain-passes-us-100m-arr) 6. [Business Wire, Skild AI Raises $1.4B, Now Valued Over $14B, 14 January 2026](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260114335623/en/Skild-AI-Raises-%241.4B-Now-Valued-Over-%2414B) 7. [Skild AI, Introducing S1: In-Context Learning for Robotics, August 2026](https://skild.ai/blogs/s1) 8. [LG via Washington Post Creative Group, From AI models to the physical world: How LG is bringing AI into industry, 10 November 2026](https://www.washingtonpost.com/creativegroup/lg/from-ai-models-to-the-physical-world-how-lg-is-bringing-ai-into-industry/) --- Skild AI open-sources its physics engine, up to 13 times faster than Nvidia's PhysX, in Nvidia's Newton — The Inference. Canonical: https://theinference.org/article/skild-ai-open-sources-its-physics-engine-up-to-13-times-faster-than-nvidia-s-physx-in-nvidia-s-newton