Cerebras Systems Debuts on Nasdaq in Blockbuster IPO

Wafer-scale AI chip developer raises $5.55 billion in landmark public offering

Cerebras sold 30 million shares at $185 each—above its raised range—after the offering was oversubscribed by more than 20 times.

Cerebras Systems, a developer of wafer-scale AI chips, completed its initial public offering (IPO) on Thursday, May 13, 2025, raising approximately $5.55 billion. The company's shares began trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol CBRS.

IPO Details

The company sold 30 million shares at an IPO price of $185 per share. This price was above the raised range of $150 to $160 per share that the company had considered earlier in the week due to strong demand. The offering was reportedly oversubscribed by more than 20 times.

Shares opened for public trading at $385 and closed the first day at $311.07, a 68.2% increase over the IPO price. The stock's trading range for the day was $300.00 to $386.34, with 33 million shares changing hands.

At the IPO price, the company had a fully diluted valuation of $56.4 billion. At the closing price, the market capitalization was approximately $67 billion, based on 215.23 million shares outstanding.

Company Background

Cerebras was founded in 2016 by Andrew Feldman, who previously led SeaMicro. The company develops wafer-scale AI processors, using a single large chip (Wafer-Scale Engine or WSE) instead of multiple smaller GPUs connected via interconnects.

The company's technology has evolved through multiple generations:

• First-generation WSE: 46,225 square mm, using on-chip SRAM for memory
• WSE-2 (2021): Moved to TSMC 7nm process
• WSE-3 (2024): Moved to TSMC 5nm process, achieving 125 petaFLOPS sparse compute at 16-bit precision

Cerebras chips are designed for AI inference workloads, positioning the company as a competitor to Nvidia. The company offers AI supercomputers (CS-2 and CS-3) and cloud-based access.

Financial Performance

The company reported the following revenue figures:

2025 revenue growth was 76% year-over-year, driven by 69% growth in hardware and 99% growth in cloud services. The company reported net income of $237.8 million in 2025, primarily due to a one-time accounting gain, compared to a loss of nearly $500 million the prior year. Operating loss in 2025 was $145.9 million, attributed to research and development spending (48% of sales). Operating cash flow in 2025 was negative $10.1 million.

Customer Concentration

Major customers include OpenAI, Amazon Web Services, G42, Meta Platforms, and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. Two UAE-linked customers accounted for approximately 86% of 2025 revenue.

IPO History

Cerebras initially filed for an IPO in 2024 but withdrew following a national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) concerning investment from Abu Dhabi-based G42, which provided over 80% of the company's revenue in the first half of 2024. CFIUS subsequently cleared the review. The company refiled after securing Amazon and OpenAI as customers.

CEO Andrew Feldman stated that the company believed a later IPO would present a stronger financial story after the growth of its inference platform.

Underwriters

The offering was led by Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays, and UBS.

Investor Returns

Benchmark Capital, holding 9.5% of Cerebras, saw its stake valued at $3.3 billion at the IPO price of $185. Benchmark invested approximately $270 million to acquire its stake. The shares are subject to a six-month lockup period.

CEO Andrew Feldman's stake was valued at approximately $1.9 billion at the IPO price. CTO Sean Lie's stake was valued at approximately $1 billion.

Market Context

For comparison, Nvidia reported revenue of $215.9 billion for its fiscal year 2026 (ended Jan. 25, 2025), representing approximately 423 times Cerebras's 2025 revenue.

Market capitalizations of major chip stocks for comparison: