Ten years ago, betting on hardware instead of software made you the weird kid at the venture capital lunch table. Lior Susan’s Eclipse Ventures leaned into that awkwardness anyway, parking $6.5 million into Cerebras Systems, a company building massive AI chips. That stake is now worth an estimated $2.5 billion.
For those keeping score at home, that’s roughly a 385x return.
How Cerebras lit the fuse
Cerebras Systems, the AI chip company that builds wafer-scale processors designed to compete with Nvidia’s dominance in AI training hardware, went public with shares priced at $185. The stock closed its first day of trading at $311, a 68% pop that signaled just how hungry the market is for anything related to AI infrastructure.
Foundation Capital reportedly achieved a 76x return on its Cerebras investment. Benchmark, another early backer, logged a 12x return.
Eclipse’s bigger play
While most of Silicon Valley spent the 2010s chasing SaaS margins and consumer apps, Eclipse was writing checks for companies in AI infrastructure, robotics, manufacturing, and defense.
Eclipse recently raised a total of $1.3 billion across two new funds: $720 million for early-stage investments and $591 million for later-stage deals. Both funds are focused on AI infrastructure and defense-related sectors.