Eclipse Ventures nets $2.5B return on Cerebras IPO

Eclipse Ventures has secured a $2.5 billion return from its investment in semiconductor company Cerebras Systems, which went public this week. The venture firm initially made a $6.5 million Series A investment in Cerebras in 2016, eventually investing a total of $147 million over time. According to Eclipse, this bet generated a seventeenfold return at the IPO price. The windfall marks a major milestone for the firm’s focus on physical-world technology, a strategy that founder Lior Susan championed even when it was out of favor.

When Susan founded Eclipse in 2015, the thesis of digitizing the physical world was not popular in Silicon Valley. Susan recalled that it was the era of enterprise software and Software as a Service (SaaS), and that the first couple of years felt fairly lonely. However, Susan argues that the rise of “vibe-code”—a term for using artificial intelligence to generate software code—has eroded the traditional competitive advantages of pure software. Because enterprises may use Anthropic’s Claude Code or OpenAI’s models to create bespoke software, Susan believes the real moat in software is gone. In contrast, physical infrastructure remains difficult to replicate. “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. This physical-world focus is critical, he notes, because 85% of global GDP is tied to the physical world. Recently, shares of semiconductor companies TSMC and Micron hit all-time highs, reflecting this market shift.

This momentum is visible in the funding flowing to Eclipse’s portfolio. In its first eight years, the firm’s portfolio companies raised less than $4 billion in total. In contrast, Eclipse portfolio companies raised nearly $15 billion in 2025, with late-stage momentum reaching $4.5 billion in Q1 2026 alone. Key follow-on funding rounds for these portfolio companies include:

• Wayve: $1.2 billion for the autonomous driving technology company.
• True Anomaly: $650 million for the space technology company.
• Bedrock Robotics: $270 million for the robotics company.
• Oxide Computer: $200 million for the computer hardware company.

Susan attributes this growth to more than just artificial intelligence. He points to a rare alignment of capital, talent, customer demand, technology, and policy. Specifically, the U.S. government is encouraging industries like robotics, semiconductors, space, and mining through subsidies and regulation. Commenting on this alignment of forces in America, Susan stated that this is the first time he believes these five forces have aligned since the era of Henry Ford and Carnegie.

Why it matters

The $2.5 billion return from Cerebras validates Eclipse Ventures’ long-standing investment thesis that physical-world technology, such as semiconductors and robotics, is becoming increasingly lucrative compared to pure software.