When Lior Susan started Eclipse Ventures in 2015, the firm’s thesis of digitizing the physical world wasn’t particularly popular in Silicon Valley.
“It was the era of enterprise software and SaaS, and it felt fairly lonely 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 the tech world’s action. The firm’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 firm invested a total of $147 million in Cerebras over time, a bet that generated a 17-fold return at the IPO price of $185 per share, according to Eclipse.
For Susan, the windfall from Cerebras is only the beginning of reaping big rewards from a longstanding belief that because 85% of global GDP is tied to the physical world, investing in companies beyond pure software could be immensely lucrative.
Public markets and startup founders seem to be recognizing the value of physical-world tech now, too. Susan noted that shares of TSMC and Micron recently hit all-time highs, while a growing cohort of elite founders are eager to build startups at the intersection of hardware and software.
