Suranga Chandratillake

VC @balderton. Previously: Founder/CEO blinkx (now TRMR.L) and US CTO Autonomy. Yet more previously: CompSci @Cambridge_Uni

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

1/ hearing about many tough bridge/other rounds situations this year due to VC reserve strategies coming unstuck in the rapid market shift. Building on @fredwilson's great post https://t.co/lsfPtwBIeQ I wrote up some of the new dynamics I've seen/heard. https://t.co/urgYnOlTLV

[Carole Cadwalladr @carolecadwalla]

NEW: Palantir’s revolving door.

A new investigation by @thenerve_news has found Palantir has recruited more than 30 senior officials from UK govt, a strategy transparency experts say poses an ‘acute risk’ of corruption.
1/

Link ⬇️

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

Have worked with @Sethwinterroth and @EclipseVentures for 7+ years on the board of @wayve_ai. They were talking about physical tech a decade before it became trendy and are still ahead of the market today. If you’re building with atoms, you’d be a moron not to talk to them!

[Seth Winterroth 🤖 @Sethwinterroth]

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.

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@LinkN01 Though paid for by pumping a *lot* of oil :)

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@hkanji Not as late or as little as the US, others will retort.

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@Iainrhall you won't remember me; I was at PWHS from 1989-96. Thank you for all you did to make the school such an inspiring place. I've had the fortune to do & see so much in my life and none of it would've happened without the foundation you + your team gave me. All the best!

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@martinvars Not hard to explain at all! Despite the Republican garb, Trump (like many current populists) is a protectionist. In that sense, v like old-school socialists. I hope you're not too exposed to Nasdaq/S&P - long way to go down to unwind all those companies' international exposure!

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@NofilSakharkar @getblinkx sorry - different blinkx!

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@hkanji I've seen it change in the 40+ years I've been aware of it, but it's slow. The sad thing is, I think it's also taking hold of the US more and more. Reversing that would be a great achievement for the Democrats or the Republicans (both would claim to be against it, after all).

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@fhuszar yes but where is finboys and who/what are Hsn?

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@gdibner i kept coming across companies, 3-4 years ago that would say 'we use blockchain as the data structure/protocol to do x, y, z' and then we'd talk about x, y, z and end up realising that actually a regular relational database did the job just as well and usually more efficiently.

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@ben_brown71 @theAliceRoberts So we're agreed on an educational utopia where science is taught but spirituality is recognised. Where all faiths (and none) are discussed as equal because being a true human is not exclusive to being Christian or Muslim? First step: stop 25% of primary schools being CofE, right?

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@ben_brown71 @theAliceRoberts Hi Ben, a genuine offer of the different approaches to the world and life might recognise the existence of other religions and also none (the largest group in modern Britain). But CofE schools don't do that, do they?

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@iain4europe @theAliceRoberts That's great for your local Catholic school. Not relevant for the CofE schools in our city. I think you're struggling to understand that not everyone has the same experience as you do.

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@iain4europe @theAliceRoberts Yes - and that exceptionalism is the problem. So because a minority of people think a church school is what they want for their children, everyone (the majority) has to suffer it? Much better to have a syllabus that represents the pluralism that is reality in modern Britain.

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@iain4europe @theAliceRoberts Again, I think you may be generalising from your experience and are perhaps unaware of the true legislation around this area. I was too once (and was fairly relaxed about it all). Of course there are schools that choose to operate differently, but there's no guarantee of that.

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@iain4europe @theAliceRoberts ... they live with substandard governance (which is potentially dangerous) in order to cling onto something that does not represent the community. The Christian governors they do have might be good folk but are not representative at all - whiter, older, etc.

[Suranga Chandratillake @surangac]

@iain4europe @theAliceRoberts I think you're may be generalising your experience (which sounds similar to mine) to all schools. The current rules leave it open for faith schools (including Jewish, Muslim and other schools) to be much, much more indoctrinating.