Your browser window is too small. Please expand to 770 px or larger and view on a desktop or tablet device for the best viewing experience.

Building to Last

Eclipse 2023 Year in Review

While much has changed in the world this past year, Eclipse’s mission to digitally transform physical industries remains resolute. We added eight new companies to our portfolio and reinvested in many more. We continued to strengthen our bench of investors with two new exceptional operators, welcoming Partners Marc Stoll and Kaitlyn Glancy. And finally, earlier this year, we closed Eclipse Fund V and Eclipse Early Growth Fund II for a combined $1.2B.

An arrow facing downwards
2023 Highlights

Introduction

Our thesis areas remain at the forefront of national conversations. The widespread adoption of AI has both companies and countries evaluating the robustness of their “AI backbone” — the infrastructure required to support this new paradigm of compute. Bright Machines is leading the charge, helping cloud providers meet surging demand by automating the manufacturing of critical infrastructure. As generative AI has proliferated across sectors, Cerebras’ wafer-scale integration approach allows global organizations of all sizes to train models in record time.

While labor shortages have created increasingly acute challenges around the economy, robotics and automation solutions — from surgery to construction; from grocery logistics to retail — have enabled customers to grow profitability and productivity. Incumbents are taking note, too: this year, Eclipse portfolio company Clearpath Robotics was acquired by Rockwell Automation. This is the fourth robotics acquisition from the Eclipse portfolio.

Pharmaceutical and therapeutic breakthroughs continue apace, but getting these critical treatments to patients remains slow and inefficient (at best) thanks to outdated supply chains and manufacturing processes. With innovative manufacturing and automation capabilities, Cellares has made significant progress towards accelerating access to life-saving cell therapies; while Nucleus RadioPharma is positioned to deliver a new paradigm of cancer therapy through the development, manufacturing, and supply chain of radiopharmaceuticals.

As we look to the year ahead and the considerable work required to bring the New Economy to fruition, we reflect on the traction made this past year to spur the Industrial Evolution forward thanks to the collective efforts of the Eclipse portfolio.

Portfolio

Portfolio Additions

2023 was a busy year for investing at Eclipse. The team built three new companies from the Venture Equity program, led financing rounds in three Early-Stage startups, and added five new Early Growth companies, including three instances of compounding capital and two ‘net-new’ companies from outside the Eclipse portfolio. Investments include:

Venture Equity / Early-Stage

A plus sign icon.

Pioneering U.S.-based vertical integration of sodium-ion battery energy storage in partnership with leading Independent Power Producers and utilities. Peak will deploy systems from 2025, alongside a domestic Giga-Battery-Factory by 2027.

VISIT WEBSITE

Venture Equity / Early-Stage

A plus sign icon.

Pursuing environmental cleanup on a planetary scale, the company will focus initially on eradicating contaminants with a mobile and modular land decontamination treatment system. Unlike single-use treatment plants, which take months or years to set up, the company’s solution is deployable on contaminated sites in hours.

VISIT WEBSITE

Early-Stage

A plus sign icon.

Automating the sustainable design of buildings for the construction industry, delivering huge time and cost savings. Augmenta's flagship platform leverages artificial intelligence and high-performance computing techniques to generate fully constructible, code-compliant designs of the most costly systems of a building: the mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and structural (MEPS) systems.

VISIT WEBSITE

Early-Stage

A plus sign icon.

Creating a new standard of structural heart intervention. The company is developing a catheter-based robotic platform with next generation implant technology to provide better options for patients with heart valve disease.

VISIT WEBSITE

Early Growth

A plus sign icon.

Electrifying the marine industry, starting with high-performance watersport boats.

VISIT WEBSITE

Early Growth

A plus sign icon.

A software-first logistics platform enabling industry-best speed and quality, with a lower cost structure compared to legacy incumbents. AxleHire has built a national fulfillment network delivering tens of millions of packages a year with same day / next day service, at a competitive price.

VISIT WEBSITE

Early Growth

A plus sign icon.

Giving retailers unprecedented visibility and insight into the state of their store environments, while improving inventory and operational challenges through AI and robotics.

VISIT WEBSITE

Early Growth

A plus sign icon.

Designing and building propulsion systems for the world’s most crucial missions in space and defense.

VISIT WEBSITE

Portfolio Highlights

Eclipse founders are building the New Economy and this year, our portfolio companies across stages and sectors achieved technical goals and delivered for their customers. A few highlights:

Fundraising

A plus sign icon.

Since the company’s founding in 2021, Arc successfully delivered the Arc One to customers, secured more than $100 million in funding, grew the company from three employees to more than 80, and opened a new 150,000 sq ft factory in Torrance, CA, to ramp production of its next model.

READ MORE

Fundraising

A plus sign icon.

As the first Integrated Development and Manufacturing Organization (IDMO), Cellares announced plans for its commercial-scale Smart Factory in Bridgewater, NJ. This 118,000 sq ft facility will have capacity for 40,000 cell therapy batches annually — a 10x productivity increase compared with conventional CDMO facilities.

VISIT WEBSITEREAD MORE

Fundraising

A plus sign icon.

Tenstorrent’s new type of processor, optimized specifically for machine learning workloads, is gathering significant interest from commercial partners across sectors.

READ MORE

Fundraising

A plus sign icon.

Demand for grid-scale energy storage is growing rapidly. Peak Energy is building large-scale sodium-ion battery systems which offer the best electrochemistry for stationary energy in terms of cost, safety, and thermal stability.

READ MORE

Fundraising

A plus sign icon.

One year after Eclipse co-founded Nucleus RadioPharma alongside Mayo Clinic, the company raised $56M to build new facilities to develop, manufacture, and distribute radiopharmaceuticals. The company is already seeing strong commercial traction, and has recruited industry heavyweights to its C-suite.

READ MORE

Fundraising

A plus sign icon.

Founded in early 2022, True Anomaly has demonstrated incredible traction with bookings from government and commercial customers. The company is focused on delivering against these contracts, as well as scaling the team, product, and customer base.

READ MORE

Commercial Partnerships

A plus sign icon.

The Condor Galaxy network of nine interconnected supercomputers launched by Cerebras in partnership with G42, a UAE-based technology group, will significantly reduce AI model training time. The strategic partnership kicks off with a $100M deal (growing to ~$1B as more supercomputers are delivered), one of the largest contracts for a Nvidia competitor.

READ MORE

Commercial Partnerships

A plus sign icon.

Cellares' TAP program allows cell therapy developers to adopt the company's automated manufacturing technology for products in their pipeline. Bristol Myers Squibb quickly expanded from one to two agreements to evaluate the Cell Shuttle for production of two therapies, and Lyell Immunopharma also entered a proof-of-concept study for manufacturing its LYL797 CAR-T asset using the Cell Shuttle.

READ MORE

Commercial Partnerships

A plus sign icon.

In its first full year of operations, True Anomaly won a $17.4M Phase III SBIR contract from the U.S. Space Force. The company will deliver a suite of Space Domain Awareness (SDA) applications through its integrated operating system, known as Mosaic.

READ MORE

Milestones

A plus sign icon.

Reliable Robotics became the first autonomous aircraft company to receive FAA approval of its certification plan for autonomous aircraft in July. This is a milestone the company has been working towards for the last four years and marks a significant inflection point. Soon after, the company crossed another major chasm, demonstrating the successful flight of an uncrewed Cessna 208B Caravan with no one on board, operated by a remote pilot in the company’s control center 50 miles away — a historic first for the aviation industry.

READ MORE

Milestones

A plus sign icon.

With the release of the LINGO-1 model — which answers questions in plain English to explain decisions of the AI — Wayve showed the industry and the public what’s possible with large language models in the context of autonomy. The company’s generative model, GAIA-1, is demonstrating the power-law AI-scaling curve, supported by 1,000 GPUs provided by partner Microsoft.

READ MORE

Milestones

A plus sign icon.

In June, Owlet announced FDA clearance of BabySat, the company’s first medical pulse-oximetry device, available with a prescription to monitor a baby’s heart rate and oxygen saturation level. In November, the company’s Dream Sock monitoring system was cleared for over-the-counter distribution. This milestone establishes Owlet as the world’s first medical grade consumer infant pulse oximeter available for purchase OTC at thousands of points of sale across the U.S.

READ MORE

New to the Team

To continue supporting our founders and their teams, we added seven new Eclipse team members across the investment and operations functions.

Partner

A plus sign icon.

Kaitlyn spent years at Flexport where she oversaw North America Sales and Account Management. Her go-to-market expertise is proving incredibly valuable to the portfolio — read her thoughts on hiring the right sales leader.

Past Experience:
Flexport logoPWC logo

Partner

A plus sign icon.

Marc is a seasoned finance and operations executive and works with Eclipse’s growth companies to position them for success as they scale. Read more from Marc in his post on the importance of Annual Planning.

VISIT WEBSITE
Past Experience:
Anaplan logoApple logo

Venture Partner

A plus sign icon.

Ashwin is a Venture Partner at Eclipse, where he works with entrepreneurs at the earliest stage to build and scale the next generation of businesses that redefine the way healthcare and life science technologies are designed, developed, and deployed.

FULL BIO

Operating Partner

A plus sign icon.

Will Hall is an Operating Partner at Eclipse with go-to-market strategy and execution expertise. His career spans >20 years in sales and executive roles at both large companies and Early-Stage startups.

FULL BIO

Director of Content

A plus sign icon.

Ritika is the Director of Content at Eclipse. She is passionate about breaking through the noise in tech and telling stories that matter.

FULL BIO

Senior Executive Assistant

A plus sign icon.

Amy Cusick is a Senior Executive Assistant at Eclipse, who supports Aidan Madigan-Curtis and Seth Winterroth. She is dedicated to helping our startups, founders, and operators solve problems and achieve their goals.

FULL BIO

Office Manager and Executive Assistant

A plus sign icon.

Selina is the Office Manager and the Executive Assistant for Charly Mwangi at Eclipse, where she ensures all logistical and operational aspects of the firm run smoothly. She is an eager and outgoing individual who loves to form relationships, is always looking to learn, and thrives when utilizing her organizational and critical thinking strengths.

FULL BIO

 In the News

This year, Eclipse, our team of operators, and portfolio companies were recognized as the authoritative voice on all things related to the Industrial Evolution, culminating in over 300 pieces of coverage in well-respected media outlets like The Economist, The New York Times, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Reuters, and on.

Here is a sampling of headlines:

Portfolio

Eclipse

The second annual Eclipse Carbon Optimization (ECO) report went live this year and included extended analysis. We found the 13 Eclipse portfolio companies evaluated have the potential to reduce annual emissions by 172 MMtCO2e by 2050, or 4% of current total U.S. carbon emissions — the equivalent of emissions generated by 22 million homes. Read the full report here.

ECO Report Highlights

Venture Equity / Early Stage

A plus sign icon.

Annual carbon reduction potential

7%

1.4 MMtCO2e

Running about 400 large wind turbines for a year

Venture Equity / Early Stage

A plus sign icon.

Annual carbon reduction potential

51.3%

29.2 MMtCO2e

3.6 million homes' energy use for one year

Venture Equity / Early Stage

A plus sign icon.

Annual carbon reduction potential

53.1%

5.3 MMtCO2e

29,000 railcars worth of coal burned
An arrow facing downwards
Visit the Eclipse Website