By Echo Wang, Manya Saini and Pritam Biswas
Bengaluru/New York — Nvidia’s rival Cerebras is seeking a valuation of as much as $26.62bn in its US initial public offering, as heavy spending on AI infrastructure lifts demand for advanced chips and fuels investor appetite for the sector.
Sunnyvale, California-based Cerebras is aiming to sell 28-million shares in the offering, priced between $115 and $125 apiece, to raise $3.50bn in the company’s second attempt to go public after withdrawing a previous IPO filing last October.
The company is known for its wafer-scale engine chips, designed to speed up the training and inference of large AI models, placing it in direct competition with Nvidia and other AI hardware firms.
The surge in AI adoption has set off a sharp rise in demand for the high-performance chips needed to train and run complex models, turning semiconductors into a key bottleneck in the technology supply chain.
As companies race to build out AI infrastructure such as data centres and cloud services, chipmakers have emerged as some of the biggest beneficiaries, with Nvidia leading the pack.
Exceptional speed
“By bringing massive compute and memory onto a single piece of silicon and integrating it into a purpose-built system and software stack, we deliver exceptional AI speed for customers on premises and via the cloud,” Cerebras said.
Earlier this year, Cerebras raised $1bn in a late-stage funding round, led by tech-investing giant Tiger Global, that valued it at $23bn. Other high-profile backers of the round included Benchmark, Fidelity Management Altimeter, AMD and Coatue.
It also struck a multi-year deal with OpenAI valued at more than $20bn, under which the ChatGPT parent has agreed to deploy 750MW of Cerebras’s high-speed AI compute.
Supply disruptions
The IPO market has picked up pace again, as investor concerns over Middle East tensions take a back seat and equities trade near record highs.
Analysts say sectors such as AI and financials are set to stand out, as they remain relatively insulated from supply chain disruptions and pricing pressures stemming from oil market volatility.
A pure-play AI IPO of this scale will likely serve as a test of investor demand for the broader ecosystem, as markets gauge appetite for companies tied directly to the buildout of AI infrastructure.
Cerebras’ revenue rose to $510m in the year ended December 31, up from $290.3m a year earlier. It also reported a profit of $1.38 per share, a turnaround from a loss of $9.90 per share a year earlier.
Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays and UBS are the lead underwriters for the offering.
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