Eclipse's Lior Susan on $12.5B AUM and the Bet on Physical Industries

21 Sep 2026 · 48 min · 20 chapters

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In short

Eclipse’s Lior Susan argues that venture should back “physical industries” (manufacturing, energy, defense, semiconductors, mining, robotics) because ~85% of world GDP is physical (~$100T). He says Eclipse is “operators with capital,” actively helping build companies rather than just sitting on boards. He highlights how physical-industry investing differs: capex, supply chain, manufacturing yield, government/subsidies, and debt vs. equity matter. He also claims free cash flow—not SaaS gross margin—is the real metric for durable public winners.

Guests

Lior Susan, partner at Eclipse (operator-turned-investor; previously at Flex; started Eclipse around 2015). Pierre (Pierre Lamond/Sequoia figure) is discussed as a mentor/inspiration (85 in 2015; later celebrated his 96th birthday). No other guest is present.

Key claims + examples

Eclipse has ~$12.5B AUM; named IPOs Cerebrus and SpaceX. Portfolio examples include Bright Machines, Bedrock, Mitra, Peak Energy (sodium-ion), Redwood Materials (Tesla-linked recycling → energy storage), Oxide (on-prem CPU rack for “cloud-like” ops), and Mind (robotics spinout from Rivian). He cites China’s physical-economy “five forces” and says Eclipse’s “Eclipse economy” leverages multiple companies to shape large deals and policy.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

The Value of Physical Industries

0:00 to 0:45

Explore the significance of investing in physical industries and their economic impact.

“You want to back startups that make actual physical stuff.”

Eclipse's Unique Approach

0:46 to 2:11

Learn about Eclipse's strategy of being operators with capital in venture capital.

“We never thought maybe ourself as a venture capital.”

The Story of Pierre

2:51 to 4:55

Discover the inspirational story of Pierre, Lior's mentor at Eclipse.

“I know we were talking about this off-camera, but this story is insane.”

Work Culture at Eclipse

4:56 to 7:10

Insights into the disciplined work culture Pierre instilled at Eclipse and its impact.

“they were all operators, they were all ends on, they did very few deals.”

Eclipse's Investment Strategy

7:11 to 7:51

Unpack the distinct investment strategy of Eclipse and its focus on physical industries.

“So I want to go through your investing strategy because you did say you're operators with capital.”

Building Companies in Physical Industries

7:52 to 11:28

Delve into the challenges and strategies of starting companies in the physical sector.

“So when you talk about venture equity and this incubation strategy, how does that work and what What are some of the companies that come out of it?”

The Case of MIND Robotics

11:29 to 12:19

An in-depth look at MIND Robotics and its innovative approach to manufacturing.

“That's kind of what I learned in the last like 11 years of doing that inside the Eclipse, inside the film.”

Navigating Technical Challenges

12:20 to 14:00

Understand the technical complexities and discussions around building data centers.

“And in the case of Rivian and RJ, we actually carve out MIND outside of Rivian with him.”

The Vision Behind Eclipse and Physical Industries

14:00 to 18:56

Discover Lior Susan's insights on the potential of physical industries and the challenges they face.

“that will not necessarily go work today for that problem inside Rivian.”

Navigating the Semiconductor and Energy Landscape

20:50 to 28:05

Lior discusses the dynamics of the semiconductor industry and emerging energy solutions.

“And when you look at the memory world, there's literally three players.”
Show all 20 chapters

The Optimism of Building Companies

28:05 to 29:20

Explore the potential of building companies in today's economic landscape.

“So we take every year the entire kids of Eclipse to visit two, three of our companies.”

Insights on Economic Structure

29:20 to 31:00

Discuss the economic system and taxation on labor versus capital gains.

“And we are in the most cutting top of the, you know, the very edge of the spirit of building those businesses.”

Portfolio Companies and Their Impact

31:00 to 33:34

Understanding how portfolio companies operate and their market strategies.

“That's a really interesting story in the energy space, came from Tesla.”

The Eclipse Economy

33:34 to 36:58

Learn about the Eclipse economy and its implications for AI and infrastructure.

“I mean, naturally, in the sectors that we operate, there's no like$10 ,000 ACVs.”

Building Physical Infrastructure

36:58 to 38:31

The economic impact of building physical infrastructure in the U.S.

“And that eclipse economy is actually giving us something really, I believe, an interesting view because we're in some way competing with China in their own way.”

Lessons from Banana Farming

40:02 to 42:00

Reflect on the experiences and lessons learned from banana farming.

“I'm probably the only other thing that will go back to, you know, my being a pretty optimist on America.”

Reflections on Banana Farming

42:00 to 43:33

Lior shares his experiences working on a banana farm and the lessons learned.

“it was a good discipline to walk there in summer for two years and just like walk on that banana farm.”

Hands-On Support for Portfolio Companies

43:33 to 45:27

Lior discusses his commitment to supporting portfolio companies through challenges.

“How are you not just helping out with go-to-market?”

Inspiration from Influential Figures

45:27 to 45:58

Lior talks about the people who inspire him and shape his career.

“So as we close out, I have one final question.”

Inspiration from Influential Figures

46:01 to 46:54

Lior talks about the people who inspire him and shape his career.

“Anyways, so I take this question on performance on the personal side of things.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Pierre Lamond:You want to back startups that make actual physical stuff.

0:03Lior Susan:The firm is at 12.5 billion AUM, which might be changed already. I'm not sure.

0:09Pierre Lamond:I hope it's changed. To the upside, we just named two IPOs, both Cerebrus that we did and SpaceX, both in physical industries that are doing extremely well. What you cannot fight against is 85 % of the world GDP, roughly 100 trillion, is in the physical world.

0:23Lior Susan:You're an experienced banana farmer.

0:25Pierre Lamond:That's probably my number one achievement in life.

0:27Lior Susan:What were the biggest lessons that you learned banana farming?

0:31Pierre Lamond:Shit, it's hot in summer, but it's also the first time I was just like, I need to build physical things. This is like my thing. It clips out to the United companies total. 30 of them we built it.

0:40Lior Susan:Yeah, there's some amazing companies like Bright Machines, Bedrock, and Mitra,

0:44Pierre Lamond:and a bunch that we didn't announce yet.

0:46Lior Susan:We never thought maybe ourself as a venture capital.

0:48Pierre Lamond:We call it Operators with Capital because we are operators.

1:02All right, Lior, welcome to Sorcery.

1:04Pierre Lamond:Thank you. Great to be here.

1:06Lior Susan:So Eclipse is on a run. Cerebris had a huge IPO.

1:11Pierre Lamond:Yeah.

1:11Lior Susan:The firm is at 12.5 billion AUM, which might be changed already. I'm not sure.

1:17Pierre Lamond:Yeah. I hope it's changed to the upside. Yes.

1:21Lior Susan:So for people who don't know Eclipse, can you give a little bit of the background?

1:25Pierre Lamond:Yeah, I think that the short story we started the film 11 years ago, I know that we are counting as a venture capital for our limited partners. We never thought maybe ourselves as a venture capital. We call it operators with capital because we are operators with capital. We all left industries in order to go and build a film that allow us to build companies in the industries that we are passionate about and that's physical industries. And yeah, you're right. Maybe in the first eight years, manufacturing and space and semiconductors and defense and mining was very much kind of in the corner when like software was doing really well and enterprise softwares and cryptos and consumer and fintech.

2:09Pierre Lamond:And it definitely changed in the last two years. And yeah, it's just I couldn't be more excited about just the opportunities that there is right now in the world to build. And it feels like the best founders wants to build them. It feels like the world needs more of them. And yeah, we just named two IPOs, both Cerebrus that we did and SpaceX, both in physical industries. They're doing extremely well. So exciting times.

2:33Lior Susan:Really exciting. We just had Andrew on and that was a really fun interview.

2:38Pierre Lamond:Yeah, he's funny.

2:38Lior Susan:He's great. He's funny.

2:39Pierre Lamond:He's really funny.

2:41Lior Susan:He did name. At the end when I asked, you know, who inspires you? Like, who are those kinds of people for you? And he specifically called out Pierre, your partner. Can you tell more about Pierre? I know we were talking about this off-camera, but this story is insane.

2:57Pierre Lamond:Yeah, the story is pretty crazy. We were like this odd couple in the first seven years of Eclipse. But yeah, I left when I was leaving Flex and I was thinking to start a vehicle that will allow me to build and invest in companies in the physical world. I got introduced into Pierre. And this is early 2015. I'm 31 years old and Pierre is 85 years old. and we're having a meeting and like always I'm not doing my homework and I don't know who's the guy. I see this older-ish person stepping into the room wearing a suit, full cologne and he's like okay young man what do you want to talk about? I'm like I don't know got introduced but you know I'm thinking to start a film or a vehicle that will allow me to build companies in the hardware space and in a very Pierre fashion after 10 minutes he interrupt me and say okay young man we're going to start a film together and I'm like sir I actually a didn't finish high school be never invest dollar in my life I'm a builder I know how to build I'm excited to build companies in the sectors and say hey I will teach you everything you need to know about that industry and like four months later Eclipse born so we yeah Pierre is a special special man and as I meant to told you off camera I'm taking him for a dinner tomorrow for his 96th birthday and he's still mentoring most of us at the team but he worked with us seven years full-time in the office and brought a lot of what I think maybe this industry was originally when naturally he started at Sequoia because Don was his VP sales at National and they left to start Sequoia and he was there for 35 years.

4:45Pierre Lamond:And we had a huge privilege to just hear the stories and learn from him of what that maybe industry was originally designed by. And it's actually very different today if you're thinking of, you know, they were all operators, they were all ends on, they did very few deals. They had a very gentleman relationship between the film. And he told us so many stories about Sequoia and Kleiner saving companies for each other. Something that...

5:11Lior Susan:What?

5:12Pierre Lamond:Can you imagine calling another VC today and was like, I have an issue with this company. I need you to come put capital and help me save that company. It will never happen. You'll probably get the phone call of like, all of my company is doing amazing, up to the right, come preempt around. But yeah, Pierre and I was that old couple. And I said on his 95 years birthday on camera that, you know, for me, he's somewhere between like a father, a partner, mentor, friend, kind of all of the above. And he's probably one of the most amazing person I ever met in my life. And what kind of work culture did he bring to Eclipse?

5:58Yeah, we, it's, I grew up in the Special Forces.

6:03Pierre Lamond:He grew up naturally in World War II, got himself, moved from France to U.S. for school, met Gordon Moore and got into Ferry Child, left Ferry Child to do National, left National to start Sequoia. So I say he's very disciplined person. It's kind of the best, you know, three values I can think about here is discipline, discipline, discipline. And I think where I grew up, and that's also maybe nicely connected to the companies that we like to build in this physical world. Like discipline is really important. You cannot fake it till you make it when you're manufacturing something because the yield will just be very bad.

6:47Pierre Lamond:and he brought a lot of institutional knowledge of investing and managing a board and how you write your quarterly reports and I think we in some way in our first year of Eclipse we already operate in a way that maybe a firm that is 10 years around everything was much more institutional and but he's also have a huge heart although he trying to hide it really yeah yeah he really cares uh and you don't need to do uh you don't need in your uh 90 years old uh person to go to the office every day to teach other people how to do venture yeah you don't yeah well it seems to

7:31Lior Susan:be working yeah so you were founded in 2015 yeah you raised your last fund it was split between two funds about three months ago,$1.3 billion. Okay. So I want to go through your investing strategy because you did say you're operators with capital. It's completely different from the traditional kind of like VC game that's happening here in Silicon Valley because of that hands-on approach. So when you talk about venture equity and this incubation strategy, how does that work and what What are some of the companies that come out of it?

8:05Pierre Lamond:Yeah, I would say, I don't know if that model is perfect for everyone, just to be clear. I do think that companies that are building in the physical world, it's actually not make sense to get only passive capital on your board. You need to know manufacturing and supply chain. You need to know how to deal with capex. You need to know how to deal with the government. You need to know how to think about subsidies. you need to know how to leveraging debt versus equity, you need to know how to hire the right engineering team, regardless if it's a MEC E, double E's, how to think about like in holistic, because you build a system.

8:44Pierre Lamond:You don't build like an app that you probably, if you're good enough, a founder, you just take the capital and you build a great app and there is a great outcome. I also think that if you're looking on the generational change, we start kind of mobile to cloud, so internet to mobile, to cloud, to SaaS enterprise software. And I think where the last 10 years, it's what we are seeing is basically this full stack of like tech companies taking a full industry. Cerebrus is taking the compute industry, SpaceX is taking the space industries and a bunch of others. And this is a much more of a complex businesses to build, much more bigger if you're successful.

9:26Pierre Lamond:But our model was, we were on the other side as an operators and we felt like what will be the most optimal things that we could have in our investors in our previous life and we felt like we just want to bring that model that it's operators on your board bringing high conviction, a lot of capital and a lot of expertise and knowledge how to build those businesses. So that's kind of just the model. The incubation is two years into it, it's actually also a funny peer story. I'm like feeling my hands start shaking and I'm like god I need to build again so I'm going to Pierre and I was like sir um I kind of feel like building a company and he's like shut down the door and he's like young man we're investors now we're not building companies anymore and I'm like can can we do both uh and he's like no and he's like your lack of discipline just lecture me for like an hour and I was able to convince him and yeah it's just amazing I mean I think Eclipse have today 90 companies total, 30 of them we build it and yeah

10:34Lior Susan:there's some amazing companies like Bright Machines and Bedrock and Mitra

10:39Pierre Lamond:and Mind and also and just a bunch that we didn't announce yet, Peak Energy we talked about battery that we also incubate and that's just a we We did it from a selfish point of view because we just love building companies. I didn't want to stop building companies now when I have also the investor hat. And B is just keeping our operating skills fresh. Because I think when you're doing the transition from being an operator to investor, 10 years into it, you kind of are not fresh operator anymore. Not in where technology is, not where the network or talent or customers. And just building companies keeping us fresh.

11:20Lior Susan:So what is your process of starting the company? There's no process. But how do you pick the categories?

11:26Pierre Lamond:Yeah, it's like I don't think you can manufacturing this thing. That's kind of what I learned in the last like 11 years of doing that inside the Eclipse, inside the film. Every time I'm trying to build like a system around that, I failed. Every time that I think like, ah, if I only put this thing here, I would be able to build two more, I failed. so I think you know each of those things is a snowflake and some cases someone coming to us and say hey I want to build this new HBM memory and I want to do it with you and I'm like amazing and in some case I'm like oh the world is going into hydrogenous AI if I can connect multiple of silicons and optimizing them from the networking to the kernel to the orchestration I actually will be able to build the most efficient, high performance, lower cost AI data centers.

Read the full transcript

12:17Pierre Lamond:There is not a company exist. I just go build that and recruit the team. And in the case of Rivian and RJ, we actually carve out MIND outside of Rivian with him. So it's like three very different models I just described. And there is like 10 more.

12:33Lior Susan:Damn. Can you go into one of those companies? Maybe MIND.

12:38Pierre Lamond:Yeah. Yeah, I mean, one thing we really like to build is, I think about it like as a cluster, as like an industry that we know. And robotics, a lot of us build robotics in our operating life and then in Eclipse, and we've been doing robotics and physical AI for a long time before it was physical AI. But we have friends with RJ, G10, one of the partners of Eclipse, was one of the founding team with him. and I've been talking with RJ a long time about this robotics and manufacturing and we probably talked like three years before we actually started Mind2Gether and we were like talking about like general purpose robotics in manufacturing landscape it needs to be mobile it can it don't need to look like a human so no humanoid it needs to have like high dexterity you need a lot of data in order to train the model.

13:34Pierre Lamond:And as we were talking over the years, he's like, you know, we have a team, small team inside Rivian that's focusing on that. And we did the robotics dinner in my house with him and a bunch of other founders. And in the end of the dinner, the wine helped. I told him, what do you think about us spinning out this thing? And he's like, huh. And I'm like, you can win all awards. We can attract better talent. that will not necessarily go work today for that problem inside Rivian. We can attract external capital, so it's not on your balance sheet, and it's like Switzerland. You can work with everyone, and naturally.

14:14Pierre Lamond:The rest is a history, and we were able to carve out and start the company with him and Rivian, and yeah, the company is just flying, and we're just really excited to see all of the pieces coming together, and we're going to show the first product this year.

14:29Lior Susan:It's just so crazy to hear how close to the metal you actually are. I mean, I've had many conversations with many different CEOs and investors and that sort of thing. But I don't even know what you said previously when you were talking about building a data center. I don't know what you're saying. I went too technical. But that's awesome. So I guess taking a step back on the macro scale of things, I talked about this with Andrew on the pod. I talked about this also with Tony Kim of BlackRock, because we were going through all the different categories. And it's a common theme that's very ever-present between everyone.

15:06Lior Susan:And it's like the original industries that built up Silicon Valley really were in the shadows for like decades. And now they're back again. And now you have like, I'm not going to say tourist VCs, but now you have a lot of these like competitive VCs coming in claiming territory on it. But how, okay, if you're in the founder's seat, how do you decipher who to work with and like where they actually have expertise?

15:36Pierre Lamond:Yeah, I'll say the reason I started Eclipse actually was from a fundamental view. And it's actually also was on the back of me spending a full year in China and see how they innovate in the physical industries. And actually, people don't know, but China essentially built roughly a$20 trillion economy based on the physical world. And they built the entire systems on these five forces, talent, policy, capital, technology, and customer demand. And they aligned those five forces in a way that let the economical flywheel fly in. And it's actually very hard to compete against them as a standalone company.

16:16Pierre Lamond:And my view was, if we don't do it in the Western world, we're kind of screwed. And there's no reason for us. And of course, it was from a selfish point of view, because I love building those businesses. I was never a software guy. I was always a harder guy. There's just no reason why not to do it. And after talking with a bunch of films, as I was leaving Flex, it was clear to me that a lot of my generation kind of came much more from the software world. That world sounds to them very scary, like low gross margin, high capex, long cycles. But that's what I love doing. And I also, my view was, as the world is moving more from globalization to a deglobalization, countries will not be able to rely on their energy, manufacturing, defense, using from buying from other countries.

17:08Pierre Lamond:It was clear to me that it's going to happen now. I was wrong on the time, took much longer than I thought, kind of COVID was the really first one that showed the vulnerability and as a result we were seeing much more of the onshoring start kicking in but yeah I mean what you cannot fight against is 85 % of the world GDP roughly 100 trillion is in the physical world so if you just you know one-on-one founder and you're thinking about what is the biggest problem I can solve you think about okay what is the largest time the largest time is manufacturing largest time is energy is defense its transportation, its shipping, its mining.

17:45Pierre Lamond:Agile software, nothing about all of the Agile software people in the world, is just combined less than$20 billion. Vulcan forms that are working on metal manufacturing, metal manufacturing is a$3 trillion industry. When we started Eclipse, I don't have the number, but my guess, it was quite a lot of money going into enterprise software and probably zero going into metal manufacturing. It just didn't make sense to me. Goes back to the question of what founders that are starting want to think about. It's fucking hard. It's really hard to build these companies. It takes time and it's kind of, I always say, I have this thing in my brain.

18:26Pierre Lamond:It's like, you have this 500 plane that all needs to land perfectly. That's kind of what we do. The wafer needs to show up to the cold plate, to the PCBA, to the full systems, to the kernel software, to the customers, to get the customers, to get the yield, and everything needs to work perfectly. It's just really hard to do, but I cannot do anything else in life. I'm just, that's the only thing I'm passionate about.

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21:01Pierre Lamond:and there's massive shortage, as you would know, in the chip industry. Yeah, totally. And it's like, that's kind of was my point. I was like, okay, great. Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung, if you're looking on HBMs. And I'm like, again, when I started Eclipse, I was like, It's really odd because there is like 10 ,000 SaaS companies. How it can be that there's only three memory companies? And then when you actually go and go deep, you're like, okay, it's like you need CapEx, you need a lot of engineering, you need the five forces I was talking about. And I'm like, that's what Eclipse are expert in. And we are building new memory companies.

21:38Pierre Lamond:So we are like, we are just, it's like, feels like the best time in the history of humanity to build those industries again.

21:47Lior Susan:So how do you then overlay the venture model on top of these industries? And then how do you refute the kind of, I guess, thesis or prose that people say, these industries are not going to produce SaaS multiples? I know that's technically flipping now.

22:06Pierre Lamond:I actually think it's better than SaaS multiples.

22:10Lior Susan:But could you just explain that out?

22:12Pierre Lamond:Maybe it's a little bit connect to the tourist comment that you made before. I think we kind of, we as Silicon Valley and the venture overall, I think we kind of bullshit the world that SaaS and gross margin is the most important metrics. Naturally, if you are a public company, if you're a real company, what matters is free cash flow. It's actually not gross margin. Gross margin is an indicator to potentially what your free cash flow is going to be. You're going to trade based, the EPS is based on your free cash flow. And naturally, if you tell me you have an 85 % gross margin business and you are, you know, not an agile software, you're a sales software now, we're trying to move so they don't think that they have anything really against agile, and you're building a new CRM again because there is a million of them, and you are 85 % gross margin, A, the time himself is not huge.

23:06Pierre Lamond:is my guess 30 billion there is a thousand companies doing a crm and what a lot of those sas companies happen they could their growth was correlate with the the way that they are burning money and why is that is because we mechanically move the engineering spend from what's supposed to be in a cogs and an any normal thing to an r &d it was an accounting trick so your gross margin is high, but you still need to continue hire engineers as the business is growing. In our world, you cannot do it. There's a hard cause, an accountant will not let you. So maybe your gross margin will not be as high as the sales company.

23:49Pierre Lamond:But in the end of the day, I'm a fundamental entrepreneur. And on a fundamental base, I always ask the trick question, how big is the market? 20 billion is not big enough. How differentiated is what you do in that market? And do you have the right team to actually go and solve that really tough problem? Because Tesla is what? Mid-teens kind of trade like the best SaaS companies in the world. Cerebrus is like what it is. Don't remember now. 40, 50 % gross margin is trade way better than most SaaS companies because they solve a really tough problem and a gigantic market and they get paid for it.

24:27Pierre Lamond:And that's what I do for a living.

24:29Lior Susan:So I want to go through some of your portfolio because you have some really fun names in there. Cerebrus is obviously one of them. You've Ursa Major, Vulcan Forms, which you mentioned, and Bright Machines, Augury, Skyrise, Oxide, which is really interesting. We should talk about that one. Talk about it, yeah. Wave, Bedrock, True Anomaly, also very cool. And same with Redwood Materials, which is the next one I have. And Ark, the nuclear company, Verkata, you also have Anduril on there. But I guess to start with all of those and the different categories you're going after, let's base it off the the latest fundraise so of the physical industries that you're going after

25:05Pierre Lamond:like what are the main categories there is uh when you raise money in our world we raise money from what's called enf endowments and foundations and pension like institutional investors they always have this question in there when they do the diligence about portfolio construction yeah and i always have the exact same answers like my portfolio construction is not to have a portfolio construction. And the main point here is like we might do five memory companies now. That would not be a very good portfolio construction. But I see so much of like people are calling me and say, hey, can you introduce me to Bedrock?

25:42Pierre Lamond:And I'm like, okay, why? He's like, we must have a physical AI company in their portfolio. And I'm like, I actually don't must have anything. I must have the companies I'm obsessed with unrelated to trying to say, oh, I must have one defense, one chip, one robot. We don't think like that. What I would say, what I think is really interesting in the market right now, we went really deep historically on semiconductor. And I think people think about semiconductor as chip, right? That's kind of what you have. There's so much around that, capital equipment and testing and lithographies and supply chain and packaging and subcomponents that going into this thing.

26:25Pierre Lamond:So that's actually that world is really, really big and it's growing in a rapid phase. We just talked about SK as a good example. So we really like it. We also really like a lot of new type of energy sources. We think that energy is such a gigantic market. And we did a play in nuclear and we have a play in sodium ion, like peak energy. TNC and we have Redwood on the LFP and Recyc and kind of second act and we just need a gas turbine company that building a new like a modern just you know going to compete directly with G.E. Vanova on a very large gas turbine so I think like in the energy sector there's just a lot to do.

27:10Pierre Lamond:There is AI is definitely and we are not doing anything in the foundational model or LLMs. we kind of catch AI in both sides and picks and shovels to AI that we do a ton and then we take an AI to the physical world with physical AI but there is so much to do there one is like I know nothing about bubbles and valuation and things like that I'm only know how to build companies but I'm telling you from from building there's so much to build there.

27:39Lior Susan:What are you most excited about?

27:42Pierre Lamond:I think you know we I told that to my daughter so she sees so many people coming to our kids seeing all the all day there's people coming to our house that i'm building companies with so you know they um she's 11 years old but she can go she can take you down on term shit negotiation dangerous dangerous um and she asked me like that what do you think is is like which phase we are on building companies um damn yeah wow yeah yeah because she she she born into it yeah she actually our oldest born she's like dad how's the AUM doing yeah exactly how are you doing like a DPI level yeah yeah yeah she's very close to ask that question as well that's her actually her mom it's not her but this will be her as well um she actually born into Eclipse so she is actually the same age exactly as the film so it's kind of Yeah, it's super cool.

28:35But, and we have an Eclipse Kids Day.

28:40Pierre Lamond:So we take every year the entire kids of Eclipse to visit two, three of our companies.

28:46Lior Susan:Oh, that's so fun.

28:47Pierre Lamond:And then we end up in my house and like a little pool party and it's actually next week. So it's really cool to see the kids really looking on how a robot like Mitra moving a pallet or seeing like reliable how you know planes are moving or seeing uh solaris how drug is being manufactured and then they those kids asking some really good questions so uh so she's knowledgeable anyhow uh what i told her is like listen um we are probably in the most interesting time that humanity ever had around building. And we are in the most cutting top of the, you know, the very edge of the spirit of building those businesses.

29:34Pierre Lamond:And we better not screw that moment. Because we have capital and we have talent and we have government support and we have customer demands and technology to really, I do believe U.S. can grow 5, 6, 7 % every year. I'm going to work really hard to see it coming true. And I think growth, both for companies and countries, solve a lot of problems. Because I think you can focus a lot of your time on where to cut spend as a country or as a company, but you can also grow much faster. And I think it's maybe the first time, I used to say Henry Ford and Carnegie and actually change it to, this is the best time in the history of this country to build companies.

30:19Lior Susan:That's very optimistic.

30:22Pierre Lamond:Yes, yes. That's good. Yes, I'm super optimist about this country and the opportunity.

30:28Lior Susan:We just had David Friedberg here recording and he went off the rails on that. You'll have to listen to that one. I can't share too much, but it was great. And he was also talking about how, for the most part, like America, the economic system is backwards. Like you should not be getting 40 % on labor, taxed on labor. It should be, and 15 % on cap gains. It should be the opposite.

30:55Pierre Lamond:It should be

30:55Lior Susan:totally the opposite. But I do want to go through some of your portfolio companies. I think like, let's start with Redwood materials. That's a really interesting story in the energy space, came from Tesla. How'd you guys get involved?

31:07Pierre Lamond:Yeah, actually Joe, one of our partners worked with JB for a long time and on the board. And Greg, one of the other partners, ran operation and manufacturing for Tesla for the first eight years with JB. So we always had like a very close relationship with JB and the Redwood team. And you know, they originally started on the recycling. But we had some question of like, how big is this market can be alone? But we always know that they're super talented. And then when they start talking about, maybe I'll put a mark, We should talk about like second act and third act in physical industry because I think it's interesting.

31:44Pierre Lamond:But they were stopped talking with us about energy storage and basically taking the batteries that they recycle them and rebuild those batteries for very large energy storage for data centers. And that's also when CATL and the Chinese companies basically will start getting blocked from being able to sell energy storage to our grid. By the way, good idea. We just felt that the moment is right and we went out and led a very large round over there. Yeah, we love love working with JB and the team and you know recently we actually have another friends that joined the company. We brought Deepak as the CFO.

32:24Pierre Lamond:He was the CFO of Tesla for many years. So kind of the band is back a little bit there and it's really exciting. Second act and third act. first act for Cerebrus was to build a chip. Our second act actually was to build a system and our third act is to build the data centers that's running those things. For Redwood, the first act was to do the recycling. Second act was to take that and actually sell it as an energy storage. The SpaceX, first act, launch. Second act, naturally, Starlink. True anomaly, first act, space defense awareness. Second Act, Golden Dome, and other programs that are much more vertically integrated.

33:04Pierre Lamond:So when you build something in the physical world, you actually, if you are successful, you will have the ability to introduce multiple of new businesses that will grow your wallet share in that sector.

33:15Lior Susan:Most of these come back to AI and data centers, to your point before. So how do you think about, do you care about customer differentiation, like the moats and like the long-term durability? Like, are you just focused on building them now and servicing those customers? Like, how do you think about that? I mean, naturally, in the sectors that we operate,

33:37Pierre Lamond:there's no like$10 ,000 ACVs. This is not, we signed last year, many tens, I think roughly$40 or$50 billion in commercial deals across the portfolio. So it's a very large deal. Some of them was double-digit billions. So of course you care about who is the customers because you're married to a very large whale partner and he wants to make sure that the customers will do well. But, you know, we talked a little bit about Oxide. It takes something like Oxide. So what Oxide is building is an on-prem CPU-based rack that's giving you a very software approach to an on-prem. So you feel like you operate in the cloud world from tools, but you're actually running that on an on-prem.

34:20Pierre Lamond:And our view starting the company was not everything is going to move to the cloud. There's a lot of industries that will still want to do an on-prem for security, latency, cost. We didn't know that AI will be a thing, to be clear. So getting lucky is important in this business. We're trying to get lucky as much as we can. But that business is just growing so fast. And it's not only one customer or two customers or three customers. They have multiple of customers doing double-digit millions of dollars and they have one customers they're doing many hundreds or billions but yeah this is actually very typical for us to see in our portfolio so you have a well account that will do many hundreds or billions of dollars of cost of like a type of a size of a deal or tcv and then you have multiple of other customers in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars and yeah we're trying to

35:12Lior Susan:move as fast as our customer moving yeah it is like on that point it is interesting on premise coming back in the fashion. After so many years of large legacy financial institutions and people like that fighting it, fighting cloud salespeople, really, now their time is back to prove everyone wrong about on-prem. It's like AI sovereignty is like... It was in the AI Act, AI Action Plan, and then just reemerged when Karp was talking about that and tokens specifically for models and that kind of dependency. But for the most part, owning the stack and like having, especially in the US, like owning the manufacturing, the infrastructure, everything that's being built to the models, like it's obvious.

36:01Pierre Lamond:Yeah, we actually helped write a little bit of the AI act and kind of collaborate with the administration on that. And we call it the Eclipse economy. If you're just looking on an AI infrastructure overall, we have companies from building chips to manufacturing racks, like the automation to build those AI servers, to taking those servers and building racks and CPUs, like Oxides, to building the data centers and running it, like this new company we didn't announce yet I was referring to, to the energy sources of that data centers from nuclear to sodium ion, lithium ion, and gas turbines, and soon another energy storage at scale that we will announce.

36:48Pierre Lamond:And on top of it, of course, they all apply the AI and the physical AI that will take whatever that data centers and use it in manufacturing, robotics. And that eclipse economy is actually giving us something really, I believe, an interesting view because we're in some way competing with China in their own way. We're not a country, we're a firm. But we do a one very large deals and we serve the deals with three, four portfolios. So essentially you have a one dollar that became four or five dollars because naturally you are leveraging multiple of your companies. And because we are so involved in those companies, we can shape how those very large deals is happening or how this policy is happening.

37:32Pierre Lamond:And I actually really enjoy doing that A, because it's helping us, helping companies like Cerebrus grow much faster. But the other thing is also is giving us new ideas of what else we should build. Actually, that gas turbine is a great example of like we saw that gas turbine lead time is insane, five years. I fully backlogged the old companies and we're like, oh, we're actually deploying a lot of them. We should go build a modern company to do gas turbine. So I'm loving it.

38:03Lior Susan:Do you get pushback from maintaining and creating your own economy off of it?

38:09Pierre Lamond:Not yet. I mean, if we will, that means we probably did something well.

38:14Lior Susan:Yeah, I would imagine.

38:15Pierre Lamond:I think Elon is having his own little economy, right? Between what he's doing kind of SpaceX to XAI now together to Tesla and kind of leveraging the whole companies and all talent and all customer base. So I actually think it works well. And I'm sure, you know, he gets pushback, will get pushback.

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39:47Lior Susan:Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere, get visas handled fast and get back to building. Visit deal.com slash sorcery. That's D-E-E-L dot com slash sorcery. Is there anything that we haven't covered yet that you're excited to talk about?

40:06Pierre Lamond:I'm probably the only other thing that will go back to, you know, my being a pretty optimist on America. And I think one thing that people don't understand outside of Silicon Valley, When you build in the physical world, you actually have an impact on the rest of the country. I'm so sick and tired and think it's so stupid on the pushback on data centers, for example. When you build a data center in Nebraska, you create thousands of jobs. And it's a circular economy. It's like building a factory. Then you need an energy to serve that thing. Then you need construction. Then you need materials. Those people need to leave.

40:49Pierre Lamond:You need housing, you need service providers, restaurants. The whole flywheel of the economy is actually kicking in. That's actually what China did, again, really, really well. And I think it's like the first time maybe in the history that we have an opportunity to do it at scale here in the U.S. And I'm just really excited about it.

41:09Lior Susan:That's amazing. Well, before we close out, I have two more questions. One of them is you're an experienced banana farmer.

41:17Pierre Lamond:That's probably my number one achievement in life.

41:23Lior Susan:What were the biggest lessons that you learned banana farming?

41:26Pierre Lamond:Shit, it's hot in summer. And to carry those things in summer in that part of Israel, it's not a fun job.

41:34Lior Susan:How many bananas can you carry at once?

41:36Pierre Lamond:Actually, there's two people. One that is doing the cut and the second one that will basically grab the entire thing. I don't know what's the name of that in English. and you will do probably a good couple of hundreds of them a day.

41:51Lior Susan:Really?

41:52Pierre Lamond:And this thing is weight 60 pounds. And as a young 16 years old rabble, the dropper from high school, it was a good discipline to walk there in summer for two years and just like walk on that banana farm. But that's also, it's also the first time I did welding.

42:12Lior Susan:Welding at the banana farm?

42:14Pierre Lamond:Yes, because you need to weld those metal cranes that you will hang those things, but then you will take them to the packaging. And by the way, welding in summer in Banana Farm, it's really bad idea and hot. But it's also the first time I was just like, hey, I need to build physical thing. This is like my thing.

42:35Lior Susan:The bananas don't melt in the sun?

42:37Pierre Lamond:The bananas don't melt. And we cut them green. So, you know, they are like more polished than the yellow that you're buying in trade or just actually take a couple of weeks. They will show up for you to buy.

42:50Lior Susan:Were you thinking at all about, you know, you're well in your career. You got a large fund now. Would you start a banana farm?

42:58Pierre Lamond:Would you go back to the roots? Yeah. I actually, I know. I think there's like banana problems. There is a banana problems. There is a banana problems. My funny things about that, I always say, is like, if it would be very bad of building companies, worst case, my kids are going back to the banana farm. And actually, it was not that bad. So, you know. Have you brought them? Oh, yeah, yeah. They'll go every summer.

43:20Lior Susan:Really?

43:21Pierre Lamond:Yeah, yeah. They go every summer. My parents still live there. My sister still lives there in the kibbutz. And they go. And it's like, hey, dad walks in these banana farms. It's like that. And it's like, go teach dad. See how the tree growing and give them a lecture. And they don't care.

43:32Lior Susan:So to push even further on how you support portfolio companies, what are the war stories in the lines there? How are you not just helping out with go-to-market?

43:42Pierre Lamond:Yeah, I mean, we work alongside the teams and, you know, it's kind of like we manage a fairly small portfolio so we can be super hands-on and we can bring our operating expertise into the day-by-day. and I talk with most of our CEOs on a daily basis multiple of times. And, you know, you get a lot of kicks in the face in the type of companies that we build. A recent example of a company that we are building right now, they're involving data centers. I'm getting a phone call and I say, hey, we have a pool here rather than a data center. It's basically massive leakage of the water cooling of that data center.

44:20Pierre Lamond:I'm putting myself on a plane immediately. I'm flying to a place in the Midwest to just find the data centers that we have that absolutely looks like a pool. And, you know, it was like a 72 hours of me pooling all of our network of service providers, new installation, new HVAC systems, figuring out things that I actually never did before. Like, you know, you need to dry concrete in a certain way in order to not have a moisture stand in that concrete that can impact the electronics it's a thing um and yeah that's what we do and i was there 72 hours um without my family anything else just on the floor till that thing got fixed and you know one thing for us is like i always because i get a lot of those emails from founders that we work with or management teams like you were so instrument thank you so much that was heroic and i'm like guys i don't need metals this is i do it because that's what I'm passionate about and knowing how to build those companies you just must be there with them

45:23Lior Susan:in the field are they surprised that you go and do this uh not anymore not anymore not anymore

45:28Pierre Lamond:no not anymore they're actually expecting me to do it now now there's an expectation Leo by the way this thing I'm like well it's not that's not a big problem you should be able to

45:36Lior Susan:serve it by yourself yeah our power is out please come yeah yeah exactly we ran out of snacks in

45:42Pierre Lamond:the kitchen I'm like okay that's not the Lior things to fix how do you reboot the wi-fi yeah

45:46Lior Susan:Yeah, exactly. Unplug it, unplug it. Yeah, exactly. That's amazing. Wow. So as we close out, I have one final question. It's one of our partner questions. So Sorcery is sponsored by Brex. They're the performance corporate card. Can you believe that? It's amazing. Yes. Spending smarter, moving faster. Anyways, so I take this question on performance on the personal side of things. I asked Andrew this. He said Pierre and he said some other individuals. but I believe that you're really a subset of the people you surround yourself with, who you're inspired by, who you're mentored by, your friends, family, those kinds of things.

46:25Lior Susan:And as you set out to build a very successful and ambitious career, you're obviously building over and over again. Who are those people for you?

46:33Pierre Lamond:Yeah, and Pierre was a huge one for me, but since Andrew stole the thunder, I will not be able to use Pierre. That would be a suck. But, you know, I spent quite a lot of time with Sam at OpenAI in the last year or so. And I know that there's a bunch of point of view about him and about the company. I actually think he's really special. And I actually think he's also a really good guy with a good heart and a great builder. And I think a lot of the things that OpenAI did and others, and Entropic and other amazing companies, are really important to our ability to build more companies and our ability to shape communities.

47:22Pierre Lamond:And, you know, to see my parents using ChatGPD is unbelievable. So definitely a source of inspiration for me.

47:31Lior Susan:That's amazing. I wasn't expecting that one. Maybe you were going to say a robot or something. I don't know.

47:38Pierre Lamond:One that we are building.

47:40Lior Susan:Well, Lior, thank you so much. It was such a pleasure. Love all the stories.

47:44Pierre Lamond:Thanks for having me.

47:45Lior Susan:Hey, it's Molly. If you enjoy our interviews, check out our newsletter, Sorcery.vc, where we deliver a once a week top deals and tech headlines email and also go deeper on our podcast interviews. Subscribe to Sorcery today. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen. Link in description to sign up. Thank you.

From the publisher

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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(00:00) Lior Susan, Founder & CEO at Eclipse

(01:02) The story behind Eclipse

(02:35) How Lior met Pierre

(07:33) Why physical companies need operators

(12:35) How Mind Robotics was spun out of Rivian

(15:41) Why Lior started Eclipse

(18:21) Why building physical companies is so hard

(24:33) Inside Eclipse’s physical industry bet

(36:01) Building the "Eclipse Economy"

(40:08) Why physical infrastructure creates jobs

(41:19) From banana farmer to VC

(43:37) What it really means to support a portfolio company  

(46:00) Who inspires Lior?

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