Venture Capital Bets Big on Hard Tech
Analyzing capital shifts from pure software toward advanced manufacturing and industrial supply chains.
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Oct 24, 2026
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- Lior Susan Eclipse’s core bet is that venture’s largest opportunity sits in the physical economy—roughly 85% of global GDP, or $100 trillion. Lior Susan argues that manufacturing, energy, defense, transportation, shipping, mining, and semiconductors were neglected while capital …
- The firm has scaled to about $12.5 billion in AUM by acting as “operators with capital,” not passive venture investors. Eclipse has roughly 90 portfolio companies and helped build 30 of them, while its latest two-fund raise totaled $1.3 billion. Physical …
- Susan rejects formulaic incubation even though company creation is central to Eclipse’s model. “There’s no process,” he says: some founders bring Eclipse an idea, other companies are recruited around an internally developed thesis, and …
- His valuation framework favors market size, differentiation, team quality, and free cash flow over headline gross margin. Susan says Silicon Valley “bullshitted the world that SaaS and gross margin are the most important metrics,” partly by placing continuing …
- Eclipse deliberately avoids sector-box portfolio construction. “My portfolio construction is not to have a portfolio construction,” Susan says; the firm might back five memory companies rather than force …
- Physical companies can compound through second and third acts that expand wallet share within an industry. Susan maps Cerebras from chip to system to data center, Redwood Materials from recycling to large-scale energy storage for data centers, and …