Eclipse Ventures, a hard-tech focused venture firm, raised $1.3 billion in its largest fund to date, with $720 million allocated to early-stage investments and $591 million to later-stage deals, bringing total assets under management to about $10 billion.

An operator-first approach backs engineers with experience from companies like Amazon, Apple, and Samsara to support hardware manufacturing and factory operations beyond funding alone.

Partner Jiten Behl describes this era as an inflection point where innovations move from screens into the physical world, enabled by talent, technology, policy, and capital, to enable advanced intelligent actions in reality.

A studio model will help startups navigate manufacturing, supply chains, and long development cycles, addressing higher costs in physical hardware versus digital products.

Eclipse promotes a connected ecosystem where portfolio companies collaborate early to test concepts, share data and models, and leverage cross-sector data to accelerate adoption and improve AI performance.

The fresh capital is aimed at expanding investments in AI, robotics, manufacturing, and supply chain innovation, underscoring a thesis that the next AI leap will be physical, not just cloud-based.

The firm views the next AI breakthrough as occurring on factory floors, roads, and industrial systems, where robotics and automation become more scalable.

Eclipse plans to leverage cross-sector data to train smarter AI models and to build a broader moat by backing startups that operate across enterprises.

Key portfolio investments include Wayve, Redwood Materials, Arc, Bedrock Robotics, Mind Robotics, and Cerebras, with founder Lior Susan serving on the board, highlighting a focus on physical AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles, and AI hardware.

The strategy centers on an integrated ecosystem of hardware, infrastructure, and AI systems rather than isolated investments.

CEO Lior Susan says it’s the best time to build in the U.S., driven by capital, policy, technology, talent, and customer demand creating a new industrial cycle.

The firm targets solving challenges in logistics, energy, and advanced manufacturing through AI-driven solutions.