Eclipse opens an NYC office with plans to bolster its presence on the East Coast

Date:

Share post:


After nearly a decade, industrials-focused VC Eclipse expanded out of Silicon Valley. The firm opened its second office in New York’s Soho neighborhood with plans to invest more on the East Coast.

Eclipse backs startups in sectors including manufacturing, supply chain, healthcare, and infrastructure, among others, both through its seed and early growth-focused funds. Since the firm’s founding in 2015, it has been exclusively located in Silicon Valley — until now.

Kaitlyn Glancy, a New York-based partner that joined Eclipse in 2023 after eight years at Flexport, told TechCrunch that the timing was right for the firm to formally expand to New York.

Glancy said that the pandemic made a lot of people “wake up” to the issues in legacy industries like supply chain and transportation. She added that since then there has been a noticeable rise in companies looking to fix these industries’ woes and these startups are increasingly popping up on the East Coast.

“If you look at like the deep industrial ecosystem of New York, and the broader Northeast, there’s a strong industrial history,” Glancy said. “When I’m meeting with founders, they’re kind of pulling on that. They’re pulling on some interesting family history. They’re also pulling on interesting current events. Supply chains are broken, transportation systems are broken. There’s a lot of opportunity here.”

This office also allows the firm to set up a local hub for the companies it has already backed in New York and beyond on the East Coast. Eclipse has already invested in a handful of East Coast startups.

New York-based Augury is one. Eclipse backed the machine health diagnostic company in August 2015, it was last valued at $1 billion in 2021. Reframe Systems is another. Reframe is based in Andover, Massachusetts and built a microfactory to produce small sustainable homes.

Glancy added that there are other secondary benefits to setting up camp in New York too. This office puts them closer to many of their LPs and also gives them easier access to Washington D.C., which is increasingly important, she said, as the firm has gotten more into defense tech investing.

“We’re seeing founders, and we’re seeing success in our existing portfolio companies in this industrial space, so let’s go double down,” Glancy said. “If we have a team that’s based here, we should be able to go and find more founders that are playing in this ecosystem and help really be the center of gravity.”

Eclipse isn’t the only firm that is looking to put more emphasis on investing in the New York tech scene this year. Index Ventures just recently told TechCrunch they were looking to add multiple new people to their New York office. Index did just lose Paris Heymann, one of the firm’s founding partners in New York, this month.

New York startups raised $5.6 billion across 406 deals in Q3 of 2024, according to PitchBook data. While this figure represents a dip from Q2, $7.1 billion was invested across 420 deals, it still cements New York as the second largest startup ecosystem in the U.S. and shows that San Francisco is not the only place to build a successful company despite what some Bay Area VCs think.

For now, Eclipse’s New York office will house Glancy and Ashwin Pushpala, an Eclipse venture partner, in addition to room for portfolio company founders. Eclipse is currently investing out of its fifth early-stage fund, $720 million, and second early growth fund, $510 million. Glancy said the firm is looking to put that capital to work and actively seeking new companies in New York and all around the East Coast.

“We want everybody who’s playing in that industrial space to be working with us, having conversations with us, or building around us,” Glancy said.



Source link

Lisa Holden
Lisa Holden
Lisa Holden is a news writer for LinkDaddy News. She writes health, sport, tech, and more. Some of her favorite topics include the latest trends in fitness and wellness, the best ways to use technology to improve your life, and the latest developments in medical research.

Recent posts

Related articles

Agave, the startup behind Find the Cat, finds $18M

A startup out of Turkey that has built a hit casual mobile game where you have to...

Alphabet-backed Indian lender files for IPO

Alphabet’s CapitalG-backed Aye Finance, a lender focused on India’s micro, small, and medium enterprises, is seeking to...

Nubank leads $250M round in African digital bank Tyme at $1.5B valuation

Tyme Group, a South African-born fintech operating in the African country and the Philippines, has secured $250...

Hexa, the startup studio behind Aircall and Swan, unveils its next batch of startups

Hexa, a Paris-based startup studio that has launched dozens of B2B software companies, is sharing a list...

Mark Zuckerberg says Threads now has 100M daily active users

Meta’s X rival Threads is growing steadily with more than 100 million people using the service daily,...

Waymo robotaxis are coming to Tokyo in 2025

Waymo will begin testing its autonomous vehicle technology in Tokyo in early 2025, the first time the...

Cohere is quietly working with Palantir to deploy its AI models

Cohere is one of the best-known AI startups outside of OpenAI and Anthropic, hitting a $5.5 billion...

Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners merges with investment arm of Pendulum Holdings

Jay-Z’s venture capital firm, Marcy Venture Partners, has merged with another Black-owned investment firm, Pendulum Holdings’ investment...