From Physics to Physical AI: Steve Xie on Building Lightwheel

Steve Xie, Founder and CEO of Lightwheel, joins Building Deep Tech to discuss building simulation, synthetic data, and evaluation infrastructure for Physical AI.

In this episode, Steve shares his journey from studying physics at Peking University to leading large-scale simulation efforts at Cruise, NVIDIA, and NIO and how those experiences shaped Lightwheel.

The conversation covers why data quality, sim-ready assets, and evaluation are the real bottlenecks in physical AI, how synthetic data helps close the sim-to-real gap, and what it takes to scale learning for robotics. A focused discussion on physical AI, simulation, and long-term thinking in deep tech.

Click here to learn more about Lightwheel.