Automation, AI and re‑industrialization thesis

Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse Ventures and former chief growth officer at Rivian, thinks we're entering an era of major re-industrialization in the US — one where factories run on AI-powered robots, not cheap overseas labor.  

Behl, who helped scale Rivian from a conference room idea in 2015 to a publicly traded EV maker, is now investing in the next wave of industrial and mobility startups, including two Rivian spinouts: Also and Mind Robotics. It's part of Eclipse's larger bet that the physical world is finally ready for the kind of disruption software saw a decade ago. 

Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec sat down with Behl to talk about why Rivian keeps spinning out companies, what founders in the "physical world" need that software founders don't, and why automation is becoming necessary if the US wants to compete without Chinese supply chains. 

Listen to the full episode to hear about: 

• Why Behl looks for founders who are both "hyper-optimistic" and grounded in reality, and why that combination is surprisingly rare, even in Silicon Valley. 

• How vertical integration worked for Rivian but won't work for most startups today. 

• Behl's prediction that autonomy will become "real and something we can touch and feel" in the next five years. 

Subscribe to Equity on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod. 

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