The venture firm VC Eclipse has a new $1.3 billion fund to back 'physical AI' startups, pouring capital into sectors like transportation and robotics.

Partner Jiten Behl sees this as the next big technological era, where intelligence meets action in the real world. He notes that talent, tech advancements, demand and policy are driving this wave of innovation.

Eclipse plans to build a web of startups across overlapping fields, aiming for early partnerships to scale up quickly. They will incubate some ideas internally while looking at enterprises as key players.

The strategy is about connecting sectors through data to train smarter AI models and create that ‘moat’ around businesses. Behl believes this can enable companies to tackle the next set of demands effectively.