Cerebras (CBRS) starts trading on Nasdaq after IPO
Cerebras Systems It surged in its debut on Nasdaq on Thursday, opening at $350 after selling shares at $185, well above the company’s expected range. This values the chipmaker at more than $100 billion.
The company raised $5.55 billion by selling 30 million shares in an initial public offering late Wednesday. Uber’s Total proceeds could reach $6.38 billion if the underwriters exercise their option to purchase 4.5 million additional shares.
After rising above $385, the stock fell to about $310 by Thursday afternoon, bringing its market value to $95 billion.
Cerebras, headquartered in Silicon Valley, is capitalizing on the AI boom that has spread widely in the semiconductor space in recent months. Intel, Advanced Micro Devices And Micron All notched triple-digit gains this year. VanEck Semiconductor ETF It is up 58% so far in 2026.
The rise of artificial intelligence agents that can complete tasks automatically Nvidia’s dominant graphics processing units as well as more traditional central processing units.
Cerebras is the biggest AI IPO on Wall Street and the first notable technology offering in months as the market struggles to recover from a downturn that began in 2022, when inflation began to rise. But investors may face a historic wave of IPOs focused on artificial intelligence. Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which merged with AI company xAI in February, is preparing for a share sale, and model developers OpenAI and Anthropic could launch later this year.
Cerebras Systems Inc. co-founder and chief executive officer Andrew Feldman, center left, during the company’s initial public offering (IPO) on Nasdaq MarketSite on Thursday, May 14, 2026 in New York, United States.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
The number of tech IPOs has fallen from 121 four years ago to just 31 in 2025, according to data from IPO expert Jay Ritter of the University of Florida.
Cerebras’ revenue rose 76% to $510 million last year. The company had net income of $88 million, following a loss of $481.6 million the previous year.
Cerebras’ toughest rival in hardware NvidiaThe most valuable company in the world. Cerebras claims a speed and price advantage over Nvidia’s graphics processing units due to their architectural differences. In December, Nvidia paid $20 billion for the assets of startup Groq, whose chips are more similar to Cerebras, and months later announced plans for Groq-based products.
Cerebras’ IPO process was long and winding. In September 2024, the company filed to go public, but a little over a year later withdrew its offering after its prospectus came under intense scrutiny due to heavy reliance on a single customer at Microsoft-backed G42 in the United Arab Emirates.
Cerebras regrouped to go public in April. The company said in its renewed prospectus that 24% of last year’s revenue came from G42, down from 85% in 2024. However, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in the UAE accounted for 62% of revenue last year.
“There are some whales out there, some really big customers,” Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman said in an interview with CNBC on Thursday. “That’s one of the characteristics of this market.”
Regarding university studies in the UAE, Feldman said, “We train models together,” adding that these are “English-Arabic models.”
“They are the first university established and dedicated to training AI practitioners,” Feldman said.
Feldman, who co-founded Cerebras in 2016, holds about 5% of the voting power in the company and a stake worth close to $2 billion at the IPO price. Fidelity controls about 11%, while venture firm Benchmark has a 9% share.
Cerebras had begun to shift its focus from selling hardware systems to providing a cloud service based on its chips. This means it will be up against cloud providers like Google and Microsoft, both of which are listed as competitors. Seer And CoreWeave.
Cerebras is trying to diversify, announcing a cloud deal with OpenAI in January worth more than $20 billion that expires in 2028. Cloud infrastructure leader in March Amazon Web Services said it will install Cerebras chips in data centers so developers can quickly run AI models and offer another way to reach new customers.
Amazon and OpenAI have guarantees to buy Cerebras shares.
The IPO was led by Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays and UBS.
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