Cerebras Surges 68% on Nasdaq Debut

CNBC reported Thursday that AI chipmaker Cerebras surged 68% in its Nasdaq debut, closing at $311.07 after pricing its Cerebras IPO at $185 per share. The debut pushed the Silicon Valley company’s market cap to roughly $95 billion.

A Historic Raise for a Surging Sector

Cerebras sold 30 million shares Wednesday evening, pulling in $5.55 billion. That makes it the largest U.S. technology IPO since Uber went public in 2019. If underwriters exercise an option to purchase an additional 4.5 million shares, total proceeds could climb to $6.38 billion.

Shares opened at $350 and briefly touched $386 before settling lower through the session. Still, the 68% closing gain signals strong investor appetite for pure-play AI hardware exposure.

CEO Andrew Feldman told CNBC the strong debut reflects the right way to fund the company’s next stage of growth.

Riding the AI Chip Wave

Cerebras sits squarely inside the semiconductor rally that has swept markets in 2026. Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, and Micron have each posted triple-digit gains this year. The VanEck Semiconductor ETF has climbed 58% year-to-date, fueled by surging demand for chips that power AI agents and large-scale model training.

Cerebras pitches its architecture as faster and cheaper than rival graphics processing units from Nvidia, currently the world’s most valuable company. Nvidia moved to counter similar upstarts in December, paying $20 billion for assets from chip startup Groq and later announcing Groq-based product plans.

A Long Road to the Public Market

The path to this listing was far from smooth. Cerebras first filed to go public in September 2024 but pulled the submission roughly a year later. Regulators and investors scrutinised the prospectus heavily over the company’s dependence on a single UAE customer, Microsoft-backed G42, which accounted for 85% of revenue in 2024.

Cerebras refiled in April 2026 with an updated prospectus. G42’s revenue share had dropped to 24% of last year’s total. However, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in the UAE still represented 62% of 2025 revenue. Feldman acknowledged the concentration, noting that large anchor customers are a feature of early AI infrastructure markets.

Cerebras posted $510 million in revenue last year, a 76% jump year-over-year. The company swung to a net profit of $88 million from a loss exceeding $480 million the prior year.

What Comes Next for AI IPOs

Thursday’s debut could open the floodgates for a wave of high-profile AI listings. SpaceX, which merged with xAI in February, is reportedly preparing a share sale. Model developers OpenAI and Anthropic are also widely expected to test public markets later this year. Only 31 tech companies went public in 2025, well below the 121 that debuted four years prior.

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