Eclipse’s $2.5B Cerebras win signals physical-world push

When Lior Susan founded Eclipse Ventures in 2015, his vision of digitizing the physical world felt out of step with the prevailing Silicon Valley mood. “It was the era of enterprise software and SaaS, and it felt fairly lonely the first couple of years,” Susan recalled on stage at a recent StrictlyVC event in San Francisco.

Now, more than a decade later, Eclipse occupies a central role in the tech industry’s most consequential shifts. The firm’s $6.5 million Series A investment in Cerebras Systems back in 2016 culminated in a $2.5 billion total return when the semiconductor company went public this week. Over time, Eclipse poured $147 million into Cerebras, a wager that yielded a 17-fold return based on the IPO price of $185 per share, according to the firm.

For Susan, the Cerebras windfall is just an early payoff from a long-held conviction: since 85% of global GDP is tied to the physical world, investing beyond pure software could unlock immense value. That thesis is finally resonating with public markets and startup founders alike. Susan pointed out that shares of TSMC and Micron recently hit all-time highs, while a growing number of elite founders are eager to build companies at the intersection of hardware and software.

“I think people understand that the real moat in software is gone. You can vibe code pretty much whatever you want,” he said. Susan echoed the market sentiment that earlier this year sent many SaaS stocks tumbling, as enterprises began using tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code or OpenAI’s latest models to build their own custom software.

“What you cannot do with ‘vibe code’ is manufacture wafers, because you need machines and silicon, and they need clean rooms, and a bunch of other things,” Susan added.

The surge of interest in physical-world tech extends well beyond semiconductors. Eclipse’s portfolio companies across robotics, energy, and defense raised nearly $15 billion from outside investors last year, and that late-stage momentum accelerated to $4.5 billion in Q1 2026 alone, Susan said. That level of excitement marks a sharp departure from the firm’s early years: in its first eight years, portfolio companies raised less than $4 billion in total.

Today, Eclipse’s track record of follow-on rounds would be the envy of any venture firm. Driven by a series of massive late-stage deals this year, the haul includes $1.2 billion for Wayve, $650 million for True Anomaly, $270 million for Bedrock Robotics, and $200 million for Oxide Computer. Notably, Eclipse was the Series A investor for all four companies.

It might seem that investor enthusiasm for physical-world tech is purely AI-driven, whether as an infrastructure input like chips and data centers or through AI’s ability to finally make robotics viable. But Susan argues that other powerful tailwinds are at play. Beyond technology , in this case, AI , what matters for this market to thrive is capital, customer demand, talent, and policy. He noted that investors and engineers are moving away from SaaS into sectors like robotics, semiconductors, space, and mining, while the U. S. government is actively encouraging these industries through subsidies and favorable regulation.

“This is the first time I believe in America ever, from Henry Ford and Carnegie, those five forces are aligned,” Susan said. “For builders like us, this is the best time to build those companies.”