Bryan Cantrill

Our $200M Series C oxide.computer/blog/our-200m-…

In 2015, we started @EclipseVentures to back the boldest engineers building at the intersection of bits and atoms. In 2016, @andrewdfeldman gave us one of the clearest pitches on a long-term vision I have ever heard in my career. "The GPU architecture is fundamentally limited for AI. We are going to build a wafer-scale chip to replace it. It will take a decade." A decade later, here we are. IPO Day. A few lessons I've learned from our decade as investors in Cerebras: The most important company building happens at the earliest stages. The technical bet, the architectural choices, the key manufacturing partnerships, the first 50 people on the team — all locked in before product-market fit, before revenue, before the capital markets care. Taking the time to get these foundational elements right is what lets you move with velocity later. Talent is a compounding asset. From day one, Cerebras was obsessed with hiring the very best people in the world. Watching Andrew and the team obsess over this was a real lesson. Seeing Pierre and Lior work with the founders to build that team taught me a lot about the role a board member should play early in a company's history. One of the most formative things I've witnessed in venture. They treated every hire like it mattered, because it did. Reputations are forged in the hardest moments, not the best ones. The reason Andrew first pitched Eclipse tells you everything: his several decade relationship with Pierre Lamond. Pierre had been on his board at SeaMicro and stood with him through the toughest stretches of building that company. When Andrew started Cerebras, he was adamant Pierre would be involved. The reputation you build in hard moment is what people remember. This is what brings you the next deal, the next hire, the next round. This is how we try to operate at Eclipse: true partners to founders through the hardest stretches of the journey. It doesn't matter how good your technology is if you don't land the deals. No one remembers the company with the best chip and no customers. The last 24 months at Cerebras have been a clinic in commercial execution. Andrew, the GTM team, and the board (Lior, @ericvishria, and @vassallo) have been on a tear. Thousands of hours on planes to all corners of the world. Late nights. Holidays away from families. Hard decisions made under real uncertainty. Never losing sight of the mission. I've never seen anything like it. Great companies need a differentiated mission and world-changing technical execution — but they also need a shit ton of grit and a refusal to quit. Cerebras has all of it. Eclipse is proud to have been there from the seed with @andrewdfeldman and the team. Watching Lior and Pierre steward this company for the last 10 years has been a masterclass. Congratulations to everyone involved on reaching this milestone!

The mic cut out during O Canada at the Sabres game. Buffalo filled every single second of silence. Sang it word for word. This is how you tell your neighbors you see them. We love Canada. Don’t listen to the noise.

The peril of laziness lost bcantrill.dtrace.org/2026/04/12/the… ht: @Gregorein (and @garrytan, I guess?)

Eleven years ago we started @EclipseVentures and bet everything on atoms. Rockets, robots, chips, factories, power systems, defense. The things civilization actually runs on. Today, we're announcing $1.3B in new capital to keep building. The physical world is overdue for transformation. Transportation runs on systems designed decades ago. The energy grid cannot keep up with demand. Healthcare depends on manual procedures that don't scale. Defense development moves at a fraction of the speed threats evolve. These are not software problems. They are full stack engineering and operations problems, and they have been underinvested in for a generation. But there has never been a better moment to solve them. The best engineers are leaving big tech to build in the physical world. AI is compressing timelines from years to quarters. Policy is aligned. And customers are not waiting — the DoD, the hyperscalers, hospitals, and the Fortune 500 are all desperate for technology that makes physical systems smarter, faster, and more resilient. Talent, capital, technology, policy, and demand are all converging at once. This is our moment 🇺🇸 We built Eclipse for this exact moment and in doing so, we launched a movement. Today that movement is 100 companies strong (and growing!). These companies supply each other, share customers, and help solve each other's hardest problems. Propulsion systems powering orbital defense. Modern supply chain infrastructure moving the worlds goods. Autonomous vehicles on three continents. Surgical robots performing procedures that used to require the world's best hands. Cloud hardware powering the AI revolution built on American soil. That's not a fund. That's an economy — an Eclipse Economy. The door is open to rebuild the physical infrastructure of the country. We intend to run through it.

33,000 military veterans are currently homeless.

Our son registered to vote yesterday. He also registered for the draft because he has to. I swear I blinked.

@imrobertmine @magnusjason I am not actually asking him to respect me, I am trying to leverage the respect he already has for me to challenge his own beliefs.

@magnusjason @bcantrill Asking you to respect him, but not respecting you enough to provide clarity on what they mean, while insulting you.

Something that people on this platform apparently need to hear, even if it makes them feel uncomfortable: if you live in a state that does not believe that transgender rights are human rights, you will never be a true alternative to Silicon Valley -- let alone the next one.

@theodorebeers Agreed -- and its comparative advantage is hospitality.

@bcantrill This is compatible with Dax’s argument that Miami can’t compete with SV directly and shouldn’t bother trying, that it would have to build a different scene based on its comparative advantage.

@tsarnikolas2 Silicon Valley was born socially libertarian. A generation ago, the hot issue was gay rights -- and Silicon Valley led the way with domestic partner benefits in the 1980s and 1990s.

@bcantrill how are these two things related? silicon valley became silicon valley before transgender rights even existed as topic for discussion.

@magnusjason If you respect me, please challenge your own highly reductive thinking on this.

@bcantrill Bryan,I have a lot of respect for you, but the slogan "trans rights are human rights" doesn't mean anything You need to be concrete about the actual issues. Should children be given access to puberty blockers or surgery? Should males be allowed to compete in women's sport? Etc

@stuxnet_vt Even though no one will see it because of the anti-trans asshole that fuels this dumpster fire, I felt it needed to be said...

This is why I genuinely, truly respect the hell out of Bryan. Thank you. ❤️

Bryan Cantrill ( @bcantrill ) was a distinguished engineer at the original Sun Microsystems and has now founded Oxide Computer Company ( @oxidecomputer ). We discussed everything he learned through the booms and busts in his career: • Why focusing on promotions is bad • Stories competing with Jeff Bezos • Living through the dot-com crash • Stack ranking and layoff patterns from before • The story behind starting his own company He was gracious in letting me grill him about his past and in sharing interesting perspectives from the experiences he lived through You can watch the full episode here: • YouTube: youtu.be/qhSL-5GtmQM • Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/7jFM4Q… • Apple Podcasts: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the… • Transcript: developing.dev/p/distinguishe…

We’re so lucky we didn’t listen to all the people who told us to be SaaS—almost everyone "smart" btw

congrats to the @oxidecomputer team on the raise, but more impressive than that, congrats on selling a bunch of racks oxide.computer/blog/our-200m-…

@xuezhao I think we can all agree to blame @villi! 😉

@bcantrill I clearly messed up!

Our $200M Series C oxide.computer/blog/our-200m-…

@xuezhao Thank you, Lan! Wish you were on our cap table! 😉

@bcantrill Congrats Bryan!!

@anujsaharan_ Much more!

@bcantrill congrats! does this mean more computer?

@PLT_cheater No, we don't -- in part because we don't have any general work to do. (That is, it's all specific at some level.) We write our job descriptions very deliberately though, so you can use them to find a fit.

@bcantrill saw some of your stuff and considered applying to work for you guys, I know I can contribute but there isn't an exact role that would fit - do you guys take general applications?