When Lior Susan established Eclipse Ventures in 2015, the firm’s notion of digitizing the tangible world wasn’t especially favored in Silicon Valley.

“It was the period of enterprise software and SaaS, and it seemed pretty isolated the initial couple of years,” Susan remarked during a recent StrictlyVC event in San Francisco.

Over a decade later, Eclipse has positioned itself at the core of the tech scene. The firm’s $6.5 million Series A funding in Cerebras Systems back in 2016 led to a total yield of $2.5 billion when the semiconductor firm went public this week. The firm ultimately invested $147 million in Cerebras throughout the years, a gamble that yielded a 17-fold return at the IPO valuation of $185 per share, as per Eclipse’s report.

For Susan, the profit from Cerebras marks merely the start of harvesting significant benefits from a long-held conviction that, given that 85% of global GDP is linked to the physical realm, investing in firms beyond just pure software could prove highly profitable.

Public markets and startup creators appear to be acknowledging the significance of physical-world technology now as well. Susan pointed out that stocks of TSMC and Micron recently reached their highest ever, while an increasing number of premier founders are keen to establish startups at the crossroad of hardware and software.

“I believe people recognize that the genuine advantage in software is diminishing. You can vibe code almost whatever you wish,” he stated.

Susan mirrored public market sentiments that earlier in the year caused many SaaS stocks to decline, under the impression that enterprises might utilize Anthropic’s Claude Code or OpenAI’s latest models to develop their own customized software tools instead.

“What you cannot achieve with ‘vibe code’ is produce wafers, because you require machinery and silicon, along with clean rooms and various other necessities,” Susan elaborated.

Regarding technology that interacts with the tangible world, it’s not solely semiconductors that are now piquing the interest of investors and founders.

Eclipse’s portfolio companies across sectors such as robotics, energy, and defense, secured nearly $15 billion from external investors last year, and that late-stage momentum reached $4.5 billion in Q1 2026 alone, Susan mentioned. This investor enthusiasm contrasts sharply with the firm’s initial performance: in its first eight years, its portfolio firms raised less than $4 billion collectively.

Indeed, the recent follow-on rounds across Eclipse’s portfolio showcase a record that any venture firm would envy. Motivated by a series of huge late-stage deals this year, the collection includes $1.2 billion for Wayve, $650 million for True Anomaly, $270 million for Bedrock Robotics, and $200 million for Oxide Computer. Additionally, Eclipse was the Series A backer for all four companies.

At first glance, it may appear that investor excitement for physical-world technology is solely driven by AI, whether as an infrastructural component like chips and data centers, or through AI’s capability to finally render robotics practical. However, Susan contends that other strong tailwinds are propelling this momentum.

Aside from technology — in this instance, AI — essential factors for this market to flourish include capital, customer demand, talent, and regulation. Susan suggests that as investors and engineers transition from SaaS to industries such as robotics, semiconductors, space, and mining, the U.S. government is likewise promoting these fields through subsidies and supportive legislation.

“This is the first time I believe in America’s history, dating back to Henry Ford and Carnegie, where those five forces are in sync,” Susan stated. “For builders like us, this is the prime time to create those companies.”