Eclipse Ventures
Consultancy : Company : Venture Capital
Our essential industries must evolve to thrive in the digital age. Eclipse Ventures helps entrepreneurs build companies to boldly transform the industries that define and propel economies.
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AI-Powered Voxel Secures $30M to Shield Industrial Workers
In a recent milestone, Voxel secured a game-changing $12 million strategic funding round, led by manufacturing powerhouse Rite-Hite. Esteemed participants include Eclipse Ventures, the visionary backers of Forsight Robotics and Decentriq, alongside Mtech. This infusion propels Voxel’s total funding to a substantial $30 million.
Enter a new era, where artificial intelligence pioneers change in the realm of environment, health, and safety (EHS) within industrial domains. The vanguard of this transformation is Voxel, a California-based AI startup poised to reshape workplace safety and operations using the marvel of computer vision.
Micro-fulfillment center automation startup Fulfil Solutions gains $60 million in funding
Fulfil Solutions announced today that it has emerged from stealth, with a B funding round of $60 million, and touting its robotic solution for grocery micro-fulfillment centers (MFCs), which it adds can be implemented in way that makes MFCs profitable. The $60 million Series B round of funding led by Eclipse with participation from Khosla Ventures and DCVC.
Bright Machines Raises $132M in New Funding to Expand Intelligent Automation in Manufacturing
Bright Machines, an innovator in software-defined manufacturing, announced today $132M in debt and Series B equity funding. The equity portion of the funding, worth $100M, was led by Eclipse Ventures. The debt portion of the funding, worth $32M, was led by Silicon Valley Bank (NASDAQ: SIVB) and Hercules Capital, Inc. (NYSE: HTGC). Bright Machines intends to use the funds to accelerate the company’s growth, which includes continued expansion into high-demand industry verticals, and the development of new software and service offerings to complement its existing portfolio of products. This round of funding brings the total raised by Bright Machines to $330M since the company’s founding in 2018.
In addition to refining and extending the capabilities of its flagship product, the Bright Machines Microfactory, the company plans to use the funds to accelerate its Brightware software roadmap, expand its service offerings, strengthen its partner network, and grow its installed base of customers. It will also unveil an Integration Hub in Guadalajara, Mexico, later this year and a U.S. based Customer Experience Center in San Francisco in early 2023.
Foxglove's $15M Series A and the Missing Data Stack for Robotics
I’m happy to announce our $15M Series A funding led by Eclipse Ventures. It’s an exciting time for Foxglove – thousands of robotics engineers use our software, and our user base has grown by over 8x in the past 12 months alone! But before we jump into details, I want to spend a minute reflecting on our mission and why it is so important.
Foxglove is building the data stack for robotics. Our platform combines open-source robot logging, data lake management, and visualization to streamline common robotics development workflows, increase collaboration, and ultimately help companies get robots to market faster. Our products are used by thousands of engineers, product managers, and operations teams, and we’re transforming development at some of the top companies across a range of industries, from autonomous vehicles (NVIDIA), logistics (6 River Systems), and autonomous forklifts (Third Wave Automation), to lawn mowing, sidewalk delivery, undersea exploration, fulfillment, and defense.
Tackling Problems of Significance in Physical Industries
The Eclipse team has partnered with Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and put out a report, The State of HaaS, detailing critical metrics specific to companies in the physical industries space. In aggregate, we reported data from over 400+ surveyed startups that are active commercially, mapping out the steps necessary to create a strong foundation upon which physical industry companies can build successful businesses.
The foundation for building a successful business in physical world industries begins with an end-to-end evaluation of your systems, operations, contracts, lead time efficiency, sales cadence, and overall reliability. Keeping these metrics in mind early when building an industrial tech company will help you lay a strong foundation from which the business can scale efficiently. For example, does the system you’ve built have reasonable ROI? Does your operating margin improve as you deploy in greater volume, or do deployment costs scale linearly with revenue? How efficient are your procurement processes and vendor lead times? Have you built the infrastructure that enables efficient remote diagnostics and customer support? These are just some questions to ask when building a compelling, agile business that can bring value to the physical industry space.
VulcanForms Announces Capital Raise of $355 Million and Pioneers Industrial-Scale Digital Manufacturing Infrastructure
VulcanForms, a MIT-born company that builds and operates advanced digital manufacturing infrastructure, announced today it has raised $355 million and is valued at over $1 billion. VulcanForms’ investors include Eclipse Ventures, Stata Venture Partners, Fontinalis Partners, D1 Capital Partners, Standard Investments, Atlas Innovate, Boston Seed Capital, Industry Ventures, and the Simkins Family. The company also revealed its first two digital production facilities, in Devens, MA and Newburyport, MA, capturing the full value chain for precision metal components and assemblies.
VulcanForms’ customers include leading companies in the aviation, space, defense, medical, semiconductor, and other critical industries. For instance, the company supplies over a dozen U.S. Department of Defense programs, including the F35 Joint Strike Fighter and Patriot Air Defense System, has delivered thousands of components for the semiconductor industry, and is enabling innovation in medical implants. By combining its breakthrough technology, a data- and simulation-based digital thread, and operational excellence, VulcanForms’ integrated approach allows its customers to innovate faster and produce more without the need to make major capital investments and implement new manufacturing technologies from scratch.
Instrumental Inc. raises $20M to close the loop on $1 Trillion of economic waste in electronics manufacturing
Instrumental Inc., creator of the manufacturing optimization software category, has secured $20 million in Series B financing to accelerate development of its manufacturing optimization platform. This first-of-its-kind solution enables hardware teams to accelerate time to market, reduce rework, derisk ramp, and increase yields by providing unprecedented real time remote visibility into assembly and product data.