Eclipse raises $1.3B across two funds to double down on physical AI
What's the deal? Palo Alto-based venture firm Eclipse has raised $1.3 billion across two new funds: Eclipse Fund VI at $720 million for early-stage investments, and Early Growth Fund III at $591 million for companies approaching commercial scale.
The raise brings Eclipse's total assets under management to approximately $10 billion. The firm was founded in 2015 by Lior SusanDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →.
The dual-fund structure mirrors Eclipse's 2023 fundraise, when it raised about $1.23 billion across two vehicles — suggesting steady growth in fund size with each successive vintage.
Why now? Eclipse partner Jiten BehlDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → frames the moment as a generational shift. After decades of innovation confined to screens — the internet, mobile, social media — he argues technology is now moving into the physical world, combining advanced intelligence with real-world action. The convergence of AI, improved robotics hardware, renewed US industrial policy, and available capital is compressing development timelines that once stretched a decade or more.
Eclipse's strategy goes beyond writing cheques. The firm plans to incubate companies directly from the new fund and is deliberately building an ecosystem of startups in overlapping sectors — transportation, energy, infrastructure, compute, and defence — that can partner with each other and share data to build defensible moats.
Portfolio names include AI chip developer Cerebras Systems, battery recycling company Redwood Materials, and autonomous driving startup Wayve.
What could go wrong? Physical industry startups are capital-hungry and slow to scale — precisely the profile that strains venture fund economics. Hardware-intensive companies routinely miss production milestones, burn through cash, and require follow-on capital that dilutes early investors. Eclipse's Early Growth Fund III is designed to address that by writing larger cheques at the scaling stage, but it also concentrates more capital in companies that have yet to prove commercial viability at scale.
The ecosystem-building strategy is also untested at this level of ambition. Convincing portfolio companies across different sectors to share data, infrastructure, and customers adds coordination complexity that compounds as the network grows.
The signal: Eclipse's raise is further evidence that "physical AI" — the use of artificial intelligence and robotics to transform manufacturing, energy, and infrastructure — has become a distinct and well-capitalised investment category. Where deep tech once struggled to attract venture capital because of long timelines and high capital intensity, the combination of AI-driven efficiency gains and US industrial policy tailwinds is changing the calculus.
With $10 billion in AUM, Eclipse now operates at a scale that lets it lead rounds, anchor syndicates, and shape entire sub-sectors — the kind of platform influence previously reserved for the largest generalist funds.
Sources:
Eclipse
TechCrunch
The Next Web
Caproasia
Mezha
Business Journals
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Eclipse
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