Eclipse’s Cerebras – Eclipse Ventures, founded in 2015 to digitize the physical world, said its $6.5 million Series A investment in Cerebras Systems in 2016 has returned $2.5 billion after the semiconductor company went public this week—while the firm points to widening capital, d
When Lior Susan started Eclipse Ventures in 2015, his pitch that Silicon Valley should invest in digitizing the physical world didn’t exactly draw a crowd. At a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, Susan recalled how the early years felt “fairly lonely.”
“It was the era of enterprise software and SaaS, and it felt fairly lonely the first couple of years,” Susan said on stage.
More than a decade later, Eclipse says it’s in the center of the tech world’s momentum.. The firm’s $6.5 million Series A investment in Cerebras Systems in 2016 helped enable a total return of $2.5 billion when the semiconductor company went public this week.. Eclipse said it invested a total of $147 million in Cerebras over time. producing a 17-fold return at the IPO price of $185 per share.
For Susan, the Cerebras windfall is only part of what he believes is changing. He tied the opportunity to a core belief that 85% of global GDP is tied to the physical world, and argued that investing in companies beyond pure software can be immensely lucrative.
Public markets and startup founders, he said, appear to be catching up. Susan pointed to shares of TSMC and Micron reaching all-time highs and said a growing number of elite founders now want to build 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,” Susan said.
That shift. he added. is partly fueled by the market’s skepticism about enterprise software businesses—especially after earlier this year’s selloff in many SaaS stocks. which Susan linked to beliefs that enterprises could rely on tools such as Anthropic’s Claude Code or OpenAI’s latest models to create bespoke software tools.
“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 said.
Eclipse’s own recent positioning reflects the broader pivot Susan described.. In the firm’s portfolio—spanning sectors like robotics. energy and defense—Eclipse said companies raised nearly $15 billion from outside backers last year.. Susan also said that late-stage momentum reached $4.5 billion in Q1 2026.
He contrasted that momentum with Eclipse’s early years. In the firm’s first eight years, Susan said portfolio companies raised less than $4 billion in total.
The follow-on rounds across the portfolio are where Eclipse says the pattern becomes difficult to ignore: Susan cited $1.2 billion for Wayve. $650 million for True Anomaly. $270 million for Bedrock Robotics. and $200 million for Oxide Computer.. Eclipse said it was the Series A investor for all four companies.
A key tension sits underneath the discussion of why investors are leaning harder into physical-world technologies.. Susan acknowledged the argument that enthusiasm may be driven by AI—whether as infrastructure for chips and data centers or as AI’s role in making robotics viable—but he pushed back on the idea that AI is the only engine behind the momentum.
“Susan argues that there are other powerful tailwinds driving the momentum,” the firm said in his framing of the market’s rise.
He said investors and founders are looking beyond technology—though in this case. he still referenced AI—toward what he described as a set of forces that need to align for the space to thrive: capital. customer demand. talent. and policy.. Susan said the U.S.. government is encouraging these industries through subsidies and favorable regulation. while founders and engineers move from SaaS toward sectors such as robotics. semiconductors. space. and mining.
“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.”
The sequence Susan outlined links the early skepticism around enterprise software to the later shift in investor attention: he described the earliest years as “fairly lonely. ” then pointed to SaaS declines tied to AI-enabled “vibe code. ” before laying out how physical-world investing is being reinforced by capital flows into robotics. semiconductors. and related areas—alongside subsidies and favorable regulation.
Eclipse Ventures Lior Susan Cerebras Systems StrictlyVC venture capital semiconductors robotics TSMC Micron Wayve True Anomaly Bedrock Robotics Oxide Computer SaaS Claude Code OpenAI physical-world tech