Molly O’Shea@MollySOShea10h ago

BREAKING: Rare Interview w/ @EclipseVentures Co-Founder & CEO Lior Susan Eclipse turned $147M into a $2.5B Cerebras stake. $12.5B AUM. 90 companies. 30 built in-house. $40B–$50B in portfolio commercial deals last year. Lior goes deep on the $100T physical-world opportunity, Eclipse’s Venture Equity model & why free cash flow beats gross margin. Fund Stats: › $1.3B raised in April across Fund VI + Early Growth III › 17x on Cerebras at the $185 IPO price › Portfolio companies raised $15.9B in 2026 alone › 30 of 90 companies built in-house through Venture Equity › $40B–$50B in commercial deals signed across the portfolio last year "We never thought of ourselves as venture capital. We call it operators with capital because we are operators with capital." Founded in 2015 by Lior Susan alongside Silicon Valley legend Pierre Lamond, who worked with Gordon Moore at Fairchild Semiconductor, helped build National Semiconductor & spent nearly 3 decades at Sequoia. Eclipse bet early on the physical world across semiconductors, manufacturing, robotics, defense, energy & infrastructure. Portfolio: @andrewdfeldman x @cerebras, Parallax, Prime Minute, Anduril, Wayve, Redwood Materials, VulcanForms, Bedrock Robotics, True Anomaly, Ursa Major, Oxide, Bright Machines, Verkada, Mytra, Peak Energy, The Nuclear Company, Reliable Robotics, Skyryse, Mind Robotics & ALSO. 𝐓𝐈𝐌𝐄𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐌𝐏𝐒 (00:00) Lior Susan, Founder & CEO at Eclipse (01:02) The story behind Eclipse (02:35) How Lior met Pierre (05:54) The culture Pierre brought to the team (07:33) Why physical companies need operators (11:21) How Eclipse decides what to build (12:35) How Mind Robotics was spun out of Rivian (15:41) Why Lior started Eclipse (18:21) Why building physical companies is so hard (20:53) Why there are only 3 major memory companies (21:51) Why hardware can beat SaaS economics (24:33) Inside Eclipse’s physical industry bet (29:15) This is the best time to build (31:01) The Redwood Materials story (32:35) The "Second Act" of physical companies (33:20) Building moats in the Physical World (34:05) Why on-prem infrastructure is coming back (36:01) Building the "Eclipse Economy" (40:08) Why physical infrastructure creates jobs (41:19) From banana farmer to VC (43:37) What it really means to support a portfolio company (46:00) Who inspires Lior?