Cerebras Nearly Doubles on Nasdaq Debut
CNBC reported Thursday that AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems nearly doubled on its Nasdaq debut, briefly surging past a $100 billion valuation after pricing its Cerebras IPO at $185 per share.
Cerebras Stock Rockets on Opening Trade
Shares opened at $350, representing an 89% premium to the IPO price. The stock climbed as high as $385 before easing to around $310 by Thursday afternoon. At that level, the company’s market capitalisation stood near $95 billion. Cerebras co-founder and CEO Andrew Feldman rang the opening bell at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York.
The company sold 30 million shares late Wednesday, raising $5.55 billion in fresh capital. If underwriters exercise an option to purchase an additional 4.5 million shares, total proceeds could reach $6.38 billion. That would mark the largest U.S. tech IPO by proceeds since Uber went public in 2019.
A Long Road to Market
Cerebras’s path to Wall Street was far from smooth. The Silicon Valley firm first filed for an IPO in September 2024, only to withdraw its submission roughly a year later. Regulators and investors scrutinised its heavy reliance on a single customer, UAE-based Microsoft-backed G42, which at one point accounted for 85% of revenue.
The company refiled in April 2026 with an updated prospectus showing that G42’s share of 2025 revenue had fallen to 24%. However, Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in the UAE still represented 62% of last year’s sales. Feldman told CNBC the university relationship centres on training English-Arabic AI models, calling the institution “the first university set up and dedicated to training AI practitioners.”
Semiconductor Boom Provides a Tailwind
Cerebras is riding a broader surge across the chip sector fuelled by demand for AI infrastructure. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF has gained roughly 58% so far in 2026, while Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and Micron have all posted triple-digit gains this year.
Cerebras competes directly against Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, arguing its chip architecture delivers speed and cost advantages over conventional graphics processing units. Nvidia moved to close the gap in December, paying $20 billion to acquire assets from rival startup Groq, whose design more closely mirrors Cerebras’s approach.
What Comes Next for AI IPOs
The listing arrives as Wall Street begins to thaw after a prolonged IPO drought. Just 31 tech companies went public in 2025, down sharply from 121 in 2021. Analysts expect a wave of high-profile AI offerings to follow Cerebras, with SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic all cited as potential candidates for later this year.
Cerebras reported 2025 revenue of $510 million, a 76% year-on-year increase, and swung to net income of $88 million from a loss of nearly $482 million the prior year.
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