Lior Susan

Founder and CEO Eclipse

Last Reviewed: September 24, 2026

Executive Summary

Lior Susan is the founder and CEO of Eclipse, the Palo Alto venture capital firm he started in 2015 to back companies transforming the industries that are, in the firm’s words, critical to people’s lives and national economies: manufacturing, supply chain, transportation, healthcare and defense. What sets him apart from most venture investors is that he came to the job from the factory side of hardware rather than from software: before Eclipse he founded and ran Lab IX, the hardware investment platform of the contract manufacturer Flex, and he remains co-founder and chairman of Bright Machines, a manufacturing-automation company. Eclipse’s scale has grown with that thesis, from a first fund filed in 2015 for a $125 million offering to a sixth fund that reported $720 million sold in 2026.

Career Highlights

• Founder and CEO of Eclipse, which he founded in 2015; also described by the firm and in filings as its managing partner and managing member of its funds’ general partner.
• Eclipse Fund VI, L.P. reported $720 million sold in a Form D filed in March 2026.
• Co-founder of Bright Machines in 2018 and chairman of its board.
• Founder and General Partner of Lab IX, Flex’s hardware investment platform, which invested across energy storage, wireless infrastructure, 3-D optics, additive manufacturing and robotics.
• Co-founded Farm 2050, was part of the founding team of Elementum, and helped build Intucell, sold to Cisco in 2012.
• Reserve member of an elite Special Forces unit in the Israel Defense Forces.

Professional Journey

Susan grew up on a farm and served in an elite Special Forces unit of the Israel Defense Forces, in which Bright Machines describes him as a reservist. His first company experience came in Tel Aviv, where he joined his brother in building Intucell, a software-defined networking company for telecommunications networks that was sold to Cisco in 2012.

He then moved into hardware. At Flex, the multinational manufacturer, he founded and led Lab IX as its General Partner, investing in startups across energy storage, wireless and infrastructure, 3-D optics, additive manufacturing and robotics. The same period produced Farm 2050, which he co-founded, and a place on the founding team of Elementum. Working inside a manufacturer shaped his investment thesis: in a 2019 interview he argued that manufacturing is so fragmented that holistic solutions require what he called full-stack companies, integrating hardware, embedded software, data and machine learning.

He founded Eclipse in 2015 to invest on exactly that thesis. The first fund, Eclipse Ventures Fund I, filed its Form D that year for a $125 million offering. By 2026 the firm, now branded simply Eclipse, had reached its sixth flagship fund, whose Form D reports $720 million sold and names Susan as managing member of the general partner. The firm lists him as its Founder and CEO.

Alongside Eclipse he co-founded Bright Machines in 2018 which describes its mission as transforming how the world designs and builds products with AI-driven automation, and he remains its chairman; the company is run day to day by CEO Sviat Dulianinov. In June 2025, Heidrick & Struggles listed his board seats as Bright Machines, Cerebras, Augury and Ursa Major.

Education

No education record was established. None of the Eclipse, Bright Machines, Heidrick & Struggles or SEC sources consulted mentions a degree or institution, and the field is left empty rather than filled from scraped data.