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OpenAI’s cozy partner Cerebras is on track for a blockbuster IPO

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Why This Matters

Cerebras Systems is preparing for a major IPO that could raise $3.5 billion, marking one of the largest tech offerings of 2026. Its AI-specific chip, the Wafer-Scale Engine 3, offers faster inference with lower power consumption, challenging traditional GPU-based AI hardware. This IPO not only signifies a significant milestone for Cerebras but also highlights growing investor confidence in AI hardware innovation, impacting the broader tech industry and AI development landscape.

Key Takeaways

In the long-running saga that is Cerebras Systems’s IPO, the finish line is finally in sight. The AI chipmaker said on Monday that it is preparing to sell 28 million shares at $115 to $125 a share. This would raise $3.5 billion and give it a $26.6 billion market cap at the high end.

That would be a nice bump in just a couple of months for the late investors who piled into its $1 billion Series H at a $23 billion valuation in February. It would also be a boon to OpenAI and a few of its executives.

Should Cerebras pull off an initial public offering at or above the high end, this will be the largest tech IPO of 2026 so far. It could also prove the appetite for even bigger blockbuster offerings in the wings, like SpaceX and possibly OpenAI and Anthropic.

Cerebras offers an AI-specific chip called the Wafer-Scale Engine 3 that challenges GPU-based AI chips. Cerebras says its chip is faster for inference while using less power than such competitors. Inference is the compute needed to process user prompts.

A long list of top-name investors stands to gain from a healthy IPO. Rick Gerson’s Alpha Wave; Benchmark (via partner Eric Vishria); Lior Susan’s Eclipse; Fidelity; and Foundation Capital (via partner Steve Vassallo) are its largest shareholders with more than a 5% stake, according to the company’s SEC filing.

The company says its list of investors also includes 1789 Capital, Abu Dhabi Growth Fund, Abu Dhabi’s G42, Alpha Wave Global, Altimeter, AMD, Atreides Management, Coatue, Moore Strategic Ventures, Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners, and VY Capital.

Plus, Cerebras names on its website a long list of angel investors, too. These include OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI founder and president Greg Brockman, former OpenAI chief scientist (now founder of his own AI startup) Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI board member and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, Sun Microsystems and Arista co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, and several other tech luminaries.

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