For Eclipse, Cerebras’ $2.5 billion win is just the beginning of fulfilling its thesis about the physical world.

When Lior Susan founded Eclipse Ventures in 2015, the company’s thesis of digitizing the physical world wasn’t particularly popular in Silicon Valley.

“It was the era of enterprise software and SaaS, and I felt fairly lonely for the first couple of years,” Susan said on stage at a recent StrictlyVC event in San Francisco.

More than a decade later, Eclipse finds itself at the center of events in the world of technology. The company’s $6.5 million Series A investment in Cerebras Systems in 2016 paved the way for a total return of $2.5 billion when the semiconductor company went public this week. The company invested a total of $147 million in Cerebras over time, a bet that returned 17 times its IPO price of $185 per share, according to Eclipse.

For Susan, the windfall from Cerebras is just the beginning of reaping big rewards from a long-held belief that because 85% of global GDP is tied to the physical world, investing in companies outside of pure software can be highly profitable.

And public markets and startup founders seem to recognize the value of physical world technology now, too. Susan noted that shares of TSMC and Micron recently reached all-time highs, while a growing group of elite founders are eager to build startups at the intersection of hardware and software.

“I think people understand that the real trenches in software are over,” he said. “You can use programming pretty much whatever you want.”

Susan echoed the general market sentiment that earlier this year sent many SaaS stocks tumbling over the belief that companies might use Anthropic’s Claude Code or the latest OpenAI models to create their own custom software tools instead.

“What you can’t do with Biocode is make chips, because you need machines and silicon, and they need clean rooms, and a bunch of other things,” Susan said.

When it comes to technology that touches the physical world, it’s not just semiconductors that are suddenly attracting the attention of investors and founders.

Eclipse’s portfolio companies, which cover sectors such as robotics, energy and defense, raised nearly $15 billion from external backers last year, and that late-stage momentum reached $4.5 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone, Susan said. This investor enthusiasm stands in stark contrast to the company’s early track record: In its first eight years, its portfolio companies raised less than $4 billion in total.

In fact, recent follow-on rounds across the Eclipse portfolio show a track record that any investment firm would envy. Led by a series of late-stage mega deals this year, the funds include $1.2 billion for Wayve, $650 million for True Anomaly, $270 million for Bedrock Robotics, and $200 million for Oxide Computer. Furthermore, Eclipse was the Series A investor for all four companies.

At first glance, it might seem that investors’ enthusiasm for physical-world technology is driven entirely by AI, whether as an input to infrastructure like chips and data centers, or through the power of AI to eventually make robots viable. However, Susan sees other strong tailwinds driving this momentum.

Beyond technology – in this case, artificial intelligence – what is important for this market to thrive are capital, customer demand, talent, and policy. Susan means that along with investors and engineers moving away from SaaS and into sectors like robotics, semiconductors, aerospace, and mining, the US government is also encouraging these industries through favorable subsidies and regulations.

“This is the first time I have ever believed in America,” Susan said. “Since Henry Ford and Carnegie, these five powers have aligned.” “For construction companies like us, this is the best time to build those companies.”