AI Summary
5 min readLior Susan, co-founder of Eclipse, started the firm 11 years ago with a simple premise: back startups that build physical stuff. Today, Eclipse manages $12.5 billion in assets, has taken two portfolio companies public (Cerebras and SpaceX), and operates with a model Susan calls "operators with capital." The firm's bet is that the 85% of global GDP tied to physical industries—manufacturing, energy, defense, mining, semiconductors—represents a far larger opportunity than the software world that dominated venture capital for the last decade.
The Odd Couple and the Discipline of Building
Eclipse was born from an unlikely partnership. In early 2015, Susan was 31, a former Israeli special forces operator and Flex executive who had never invested a dollar in his life. He was introduced to Pierre Lamond, then 85, a veteran of Fairchild, National Semiconductor, and a 35-year career at Sequoia Capital where he worked alongside Don Valentine. After a ten-minute meeting, Lamond interrupted Susan: "Okay, young man, we're going to start a firm together." Susan protested that he hadn't finished high school and had no investing experience. Lamond replied, "I will teach you everything you need to know about that industry."
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What you'll learn
- 1 (00:32) **The Farmer Who Became a VC** - Lior Susan traces his origin story back to welding and hauling 60-pound banana bunches, which gave him his first taste of building physical things.
- 2 (01:26) **Eclipse's Origin: Operators with Capital** - Lior describes founding Eclipse 11 years ago as a firm run by operators, not traditional venture capitalists.
- 3 (03:00) **The Odd Couple: Lior and Pierre** - The story of how a 31-year-old dropout met 85-year-old Pierre Lamond, a Sequoia legend, and co-founded Eclipse.
- 4 (05:53) **Culture of Discipline** - How Pierre's World War II-era discipline shaped Eclipse's operating philosophy.
- 5 (07:49) **The Incubation Model: Building, Not Just Investing** - Eclipse's hands-on approach to creating companies from scratch.
- 6 (11:28) **How to Pick a Category to Build In** - Lior's organic, anti-systematic approach to choosing what to build next.
- 7 (12:39) **Case Study: Spinning Out Mitra from Rivian** - The inside story of creating a robotics company with RJ Scaringe.
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Guests on this episode
Show Notes
Eclipse spent 8 years investing in manufacturing, space, semiconductors, defense & mining while the rest of Silicon Valley funded SaaS. Lior Susan says the math was never close.
Lior Susan is the Founder & CEO of Eclipse, the Palo Alto firm he started in 2015 with a $125M debut fund alongside Pierre Lamond, who was 85 at the time & had already spent a career at Fairchild Semiconductor under Gordon Moore, co-founded National Semiconductor, & put in 27 years as a GP at Sequoia Capital. Lamond is 96 now and still mentors the team.
"We never thought ourselves as venture capital. We call it operators with capital because we are operators with capital."
Eclipse manages approximately $12.5B and closed $1.3B in April 2026 across Eclipse Fund VI and Early Growth III, its largest raise to date. The firm's 2016 Series A into Cerebras returned roughly $2.5B at the $185 IPO price in May 2026 on a total of about $147M invested.
Eclipse portfolio companies have raised $15.9B in 2026 alone, including $1.2B for Wayve, $650M for True Anomaly, $270M for Bedrock Robotics, $220M for VulcanForms and $200M for Oxide. In September 2026, Eclipse incubation Noetive came out of stealth with a $41M seed led by the firm. Susan was named to the 2026 Forbes Midas List.
Lior Susan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/liorsusan/
Molly O’Shea: https://x.com/MollySOShea
Sourcery: https://x.com/sourceryy
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