Eclipse Ventures has marked a significant milestone with its recent $2.5 billion return from the initial public offering of Cerebras Systems, validating its decade-long thesis on investing in physical-world technology. When Lior Susan founded the firm in 2015, his strategy of digitizing the real economy stood in contrast to the prevailing Silicon Valley focus on enterprise software and SaaS. However, a $6.5 million Series A investment in the semiconductor company in 2016 has now yielded a 17-fold return, with total contributions reaching $147 million. Susan views this financial success as the beginning of a broader trend rather than an isolated event. He argues that with 85% of global GDP tied to the physical world, opportunities in hardware and infrastructure are increasingly lucrative compared to software alone. Public market indicators support this shift, with shares of major hardware firms like TSMC and Micron recently hitting record highs. Susan contends that the competitive moat in traditional software is eroding as generative AI allows companies to write code effortlessly. In contrast, manufacturing requires tangible assets such as silicon, wafers, and clean rooms, which AI cannot replicate. This changing sentiment is reflected in Eclipse's portfolio performance. Companies across robotics, energy, and defense sectors raised nearly $15 billion from external investors last year, with late-stage financing reaching $4.5 billion in the first quarter of 2026. This represents a dramatic acceleration from the firm's early years, where its portfolio raised less than $4 billion over eight years. Recent major funding rounds include $1.2 billion for Wayve, $650 million for True Anomaly, $270 million for Bedrock Robotics, and $200 million for Oxide Computer. Notably, Eclipse served as the Series A investor for all four of these companies. While much of the current excitement is driven by AI's role in enabling robotics and semiconductor demand, Susan emphasizes that broader forces are also at play. He identifies five critical pillars required for this market to thrive: technology, capital, customer demand, talent, and supportive policy. The convergence of these factors is unique, with government subsidies and favorable regulations in the United States encouraging growth in sectors ranging from space to mining. Susan describes this alignment as unprecedented in American history since the eras of Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie, declaring it the ideal time for builders to establish new physical-world companies.