Nvidia rival Cerebras is taking another swing at an IPO

By William Gavin

The AI-chip company last filed to go public in late 2024 before scrapping its plans

Cerebras Systems said that the majority of its revenue is attributable to just two customers, including the Microsoft-backed Group 42.

Cerebras Systems, which focuses on making artificial-intelligence chips, has once again filed for an initial public offering.

Cerebras first filed to go public in September 2024, but later withdrew its plans. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company said Friday that it has applied to list its common shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker symbol "CBRS."

"We invite you to join us on this extraordinary journey through a technological revolution more profound than any that has come before," Cerebras said in its S-1 filing. "Nothing excites us more than the future of AI."

Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays and UBS Investment Bank are the lead book-running managers for the IPO, according to Cerebras. In February, the company raised $1 billion at a $23 billion postmoney valuation.

Cerebras aims to compete with Nvidia (NVDA) and says its WSE-3 AI processor is 58 times larger than Nvidia's B200 chip. That, according to the company, allows it to deliver much more bandwidth than Nvidia and provide inference at "extremely fast speeds."

In the filing, Cerebras said its top 10 customers by revenue in 2025 had increased their aggregate spend by about 80% within 12 months of their initial purchase. Revenue grew to about $510 million in 2025, a 76% increase from a year earlier. In 2022, the company logged just $24.6 million in sales.

From the archives (Oct. 2024): How the CEO of this upstart Nvidia rival hopes to seize on the lucrative market for AI chips

Cerebras also recorded net income of $237.8 million in 2025, turning a profit after years of losses. The company reported a $481.6 million net loss in 2024, along with smaller losses in 2023 and 2022, according to filings.

However, Cerebras warned that a "substantial portion" of its revenue is driven by a limited number of customers, namely two firms in the United Arab Emirates.

One customer, the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, accounted for 62% of revenue in the year that ended in December 2025. The other customer, Group 42, is backed by Microsoft (MSFT) and was responsible for 24% of Cerebras's sales.

Cerebras also noted that reduced demand or damage to its relationships with a handful of other firms, including OpenAI and Amazon Web Services (AMZN), would harm its business.

OpenAI in January reached a multiyear agreement with Cerebras valued at more than $20 billion to co-design models for future Cerebras hardware. OpenAI also agreed to deploy 750 megawatts of Cerebras's AI compute and can buy an additional 1.25 gigawatts of AI compute by the end of 2030, Cerebras said in Friday's filing.

AWS also announced a deal last month to deploy some Cerebras systems in its data centers.

-William Gavin

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04-17-26 1743ET