AI-focused chip designer Cerebras Systems filed for an initial public offering late Tuesday as the Sunnyvale, Calif-based startup looks to stand out in a market dominated by Nvidia. Here's what to know about the Cerebras IPO:
The eight-year-old company plans to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker CBRS. The company's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission did not disclose the number of shares in the offering or their expected price.
Cerebras raised $250 million in venture funding at a valuation of $4 billion in November 2021. In its prospectus filing to the SEC late Monday, Cerebras described itself as an AI company.
Cerebras "design(s) processors for AI training and inference," the filing said. "We build AI systems to power, cool and feed the processors data. We develop software to link these systems together into industry-leading supercomputers that are simple to use, even for the most complicated AI work."
Cerebras IPO: Revenue Up 220%
Last year, Cerebras reported revenue of $78.7 million, up 220% from a year earlier. The company narrowed its net loss to $127 million in 2023, compared to a $177.7 million loss in 2022.
Through the first six months of 2024, Cerebras said it lost $66.6 million from sales of $136.4 million. However, Cerebras cautioned that a single customer – United Arab Emirates AI company G42 – accounted for 87% of its total revenue for the first six months of the year.
Cerebras estimates that the marks for AI-related chips, software and other related services will grow from $131 billion this year to $452 billion in 2027. Of course, the market is currently led by Nvidia. Other major players include AMD and Intel. And cloud service giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google each have their own AI chip technologies.
Cerebras is tiny when compared against Nvidia's $61 billion in 2023 revenue. But Cerebras hopes to stand out by building a bigger, more powerful chip. It says its third-generation Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine is the largest chip ever sold.
"The sheer size of the wafer-scale chip allows us to keep more work on-silicon and minimize the time-consuming, power-hungry movement of data," the filing said. "This enables Cerebras customers to solve problems in less time and using less power."
Slow IPO Market
Despite a strong year for the Nasdaq composite and S&P 500, IPO activity has remained slow this year. Initial public offerings have raised 24.7 billion this year, according to Renaissance Capital. That's up from $19.4 billion last year but well off the $142 billion in 2021.
Reddit has climbed higher from a successful IPO in March. Astera Labs – which makes connectivity chips for cloud and artificial intelligence data centers – got off to a hot start with its March IPO but pulled back.
U.K.-based chip design firm Arm Holdings has surged more than 180% from its IPO price after it debuted 12 months ago.
