Cerebras Systems Withdraws IPO Filing Amid Rapid Business Growth and Strategic Shift

Cerebras CEO explains why IPO was pulled

Inference service launched a month before IPO filing turns out to have been a much bigger business than initially thought Just days after announcing a $1.1 billion Series G funding round, AI chip startup Cerebras Systems pulled its S-1 IPO filing without so much as an explanation. Amid growing concerns of an AI bubble, has Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman gotten cold feet? Apparently not. Taking to LinkedIn on Sunday, Feldman apologized for the lack of transparency, and presumably any panic the decision might have caused. "On Friday, Cerebras Systems withdrew our S-1. We didn't explain why - that was a mistake," he wrote, adding that he still has every intention of taking the company public. Founded in 2015, Cerebras develops dinner-plate-sized AI accelerators. These accelerators were initially pitched as an alternative to GPUs for AI model training. But while Cerebras has by no means abandoned training as a workload, that business has taken a back seat to inference -- a service it launched barely a month before announcing its intention to go public in September last year. As Feldman points out, a lot has changed since then. Inference turns out to have proved a particularly potent workload for Cerebras' accelerators, each of which is equipped with more than 40 GB of SRAM, a class of memory that's etched directly into the compute die and makes the HBM used by rivals Nvidia and AMD look glacial by comparison. This has allowed the company to offer API access to models at speeds topping 3,000 tokens a second for models like OpenAI's gpt-oss-120B, far faster than is possible using GPUs. These capabilities have helped Cerebras win over several high profile customers, including Mistral AI, AWS, Meta, IBM, Cognition, AlphaSense, Notion, and Perplexity, a major change from this time last year. In the startup's IPO filings from September 2024, the company reported that the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) AI crown jewel G42 accounted for 87 percent of its revenues in the first half of 2024 -- a fact that raised no shortage of concerns among members of the US government. To support its growing customer base, this spring Cerebras announced it was expanding operations to four new datacenters across the US, in addition to one in Montreal and another in France. With its bank accounts flush with another $1.1 billion funding, the company now plans to further expand its US manufacturing and datacenter capacity. However, as Feldman points out, none of this growth is reflected in its S-1 filings. "Given that the business has improved in meaningful ways we decided to withdraw so that we can re-file with updated financials, strategy information including our approach to the rapidly changing AI landscape," Feldman wrote, emphasizing that the move doesn't reflect a shift in strategy. "We will re-file our S-1 when the updated materials are ready," he wrote. ®

AI chipmaker Cerebras withdraws IPO

Andrew Feldman, co-founder of Cerebras System Inc., speaks at the Raise summit in Paris, France, on Tuesday, July 8, 2025. Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras on Friday filed paperwork with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission withdrawing plans for an initial public offering. The agency is operating at a low volume after the U.S. government shutdown that went into effect this week. Last year Cerebras filed for an IPO as it went up against Nvidia to make the most capable processors for running generative AI models. Earlier this week, exactly one year after the prospectus became available, Cerebras announced that it had raised $1.2 billion at a $8.1 billion valuation. At the time, Andrew Feldman, Cerebras' co-founder and CEO, said in an interview that the company still wanted to go public, rather than continue to raise venture capital and stay private. "I don't think this is an indication of a preference for one or the other," he said. "I think we have tremendous opportunities in front of us, and I think it's good practice, when you have enormous opportunities, not to let them fall by the wayside for lack of capital." Cerebras still does want to go public as soon as possible, a spokesperson told CNBC on Friday. Since filing for the IPO last year, Cerebras has shifted focus away from selling systems and more toward providing a cloud service for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath. Feldman thought the original prospectus from last year was out of date, especially considering developments in AI, the spokesperson said.

Cerebras Systems Pulls Plug On Its IPO Days After Big Fundraise

Just days after raising $1.1 billion in funding, AI processor developer Cerebras Systems has filed to withdraw its hotly anticipated initial public offering. The Sunnyvale, California-based company announced on Sept. 30 a Series G funding round that valued it at $8.1 billion post-money. Fidelity and Atreides Management led the financing. Then on Oct. 3, the startup submitted a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, formally requesting to withdraw its IPO registration because it "does not intend to conduct the proposed offering ... at this time." Cerebras originally filed to go public in September of 2024. At that time, the company was "ramping up to take on Nvidia in an effort to create processors for running generative AI models," CNBC reports. In its filing, Cerebras noted its dependence on a single customer, Group 42, a subsidiary of its investor G42, responsible for more than 80% of revenue in 2023 and the first half of 2024. Cerebras has built a larger chip that is 10x faster for AI training and inference compared to leading GPU solutions, according to the company. Its customers include Mistral AI and the Mayo Clinic. The company has reportedly shifted its focus since that initial filing from selling systems toward more of being a cloud service provider for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath, according to CNBC. CEO Andrew Feldman told the publication that he thought last year's prospectus was "out of date" considering developments in AI. Cerebras has raised a known $1.8 billion in funding since its 2016 founding by Feldman, per Crunchbase data. It raised $250 million in a Series F round led by Alpha Wave Ventures in November 2021 that valued the company at just over $4 billion. Other backers include Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Eclipse Ventures, Benchmark and Coatue.

Wafer-scale chip startup Cerebras withdraws IPO filing after $1.1B round - SiliconANGLE

Wafer-scale chip startup Cerebras withdraws IPO filing after $1.1B round Cerebras Systems Inc. has shelved its plan to go public on the Nasdaq. The company, which develops artificial intelligence chips for data centers, filed to list its shares last September. Cerebras today asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange to withdraw the filing. It didn't provide a reason for the move. "The Company is seeking the withdrawal of the Registration Statement because the Company does not intend to conduct the proposed offering that is described therein at this time," Cerebras stated in its request to scrap the filing. The move comes days after the chipmaker raised $1.1 billion in funding from a consortium led by Fidelity Management. It's unclear if the two developments are connected. Shortly after the raise, Cerebras Chief Executive Officer Andrew Feldman stated that the company was still seeking to list its shares. A spokesperson told CNBC today that Cerebras hopes to launch its initial public offering as soon as possible. The tech industry has experienced only a handful of IPO filing withdrawals over the past decade. In 2019, WeWork Inc. had to scrap its listing after investors raised concerns about the viability of its business. Two years earlier, application observability provider AppDynamics Inc. canceled its IPO listing to accept a $3.3 billion acquisition offer from Cisco Systems Inc. Given that Cerebras has stated it still plans to go public, the withdrawal of its IPO listing likely wasn't motivated by an acquisition offer. Sunnyvale, California-based Cerebras sells an AI chip called the WSE-3 that is nearly the size of an entire wafer. It features 4 trillion transistors made using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'s 5-nanometer process. Those transistors are organized into 900,000 cores and 44 gigabytes of memory. Usually, chips keep the AI software they run in external memory. As a result, they have to regularly move model data to and from their external memory, which slows down processing. The WSE-3's large 44-gigabyte memory pool enables customers to run AI models entirely on-chip and thereby avoid the latency associated with external RAM. Cerebras ships the chip as part of an appliance called the CS-3. The system combines a single WSE-3 with cooling equipment and other auxiliary hardware. In addition, Cerebras provides a cloud platform that enables developers to access its processors without taking on infrastructure maintenance tasks. The company stated in its IPO filing that it generated $136.4 million in revenue during the first half of 2024, more than ten times what it earned a year earlier. Cerebras' losses narrowed by about $10 million in the same time frame. After closing its $1.1 billion funding round earlier this week, Cerebras announced plans to add more data centers in the U.S. The company is building a half dozen stateside facilities that will host thousands of CS-3 appliances. Additionally, Cerebras will use the capital to speed up its internal chip and packaging design projects.

Nvidia Competitor Cerebras Shelves IPO Plans Days After Touching $8 Billion Valuation - NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems scrapped plans for an IPO on Friday, days after the company announced a fresh fundraising round that sent its valuation up to $8 billion. In a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ:NVDA) competitor said it does not intend to conduct a proposed offering "at this time," but did not provide a reason. Fresh Funding Propped Valuation Up To $8 Billion Cerebras filed for an IPO just over a year ago, as it looked to take on AI chip giant Nvidia, in an effort to create chips for running generative AI models. See how NVDA shares have performed here Earlier this week, the Sunnyvale-based company said it raised $1.1 billion in new funding at a valuation of $8.1 billion. Investors included 1789 Capital, Alpha Wave, Altimeter Capital, Atreides Management, Benchmark, Fidelity, Tiger Global, and Valor Equity Partners. The withdrawal also comes three days into a U.S. government shutdown that has left agencies like the SEC operating with a small staff. Hopes To Take On Nvidia In its IPO prospectus last year, Cerebras called itself a designer of chips for training and running AI models. The company has prioritized operating a cloud-based service that AI models can use to handle incoming queries. High-valued AI companies are raising large sums of money in the private market, as investors bet on the explosive technology poised to transform industries and economies. Databricks, a seller of data analytics software, recently said it was closing a $1 billion funding round with a valuation above $100 billion. Last week, OpenAI said that Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in the company as it builds out data centers. See also: Nvidia, Broadcom, Marvell Poised To Gain Big From $1.2 Trillion AI Spending Wave By 2030: Analyst Read Next: Jeff Bezos Calls AI Boom A Bubble -- But Says It's A Good One Image via Shutterstock NVDANVIDIA Corp$187.66-0.65%OverviewMarket News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs

Cerebras suspends its IPO to update its strategy in a rapidly changing sector

Cerebras has announced the withdrawal of its IPO plans, initially filed in 2024, in order to update its financial and strategic information. CEO Andrew Feldman said the decision was made to better reflect the rapid evolution of the artificial intelligence sector and the company's repositioning. In a message posted on LinkedIn, he acknowledged a lack of clarity in the initial communication, stating that the move will allow for the re-filing of a more accurate prospectus, including Cerebras' new cloud-based activities. Since its initial filing, the company has expanded its offering beyond hardware by deploying its own data centers capable of handling massive AI workloads. This strategic shift was accompanied by a major $1.1bn fundraising round, valuing the company at $8.1bn. This funding round, which included Tiger Global and 1789 Capital, was not mentioned in previous public filings. No new timeline has been put forward for a future IPO attempt. Cerebras continues to promote its giant chips as a more powerful alternative to traditional GPUs in a market still dominated by Nvidia. Competition is intensifying, with AMD announcing a major partnership with OpenAI, including the installation of 6 gigawatts of processors and a potential 10% stake in AMD's capital. This context highlights the importance for Cerebras to reaffirm its place in the AI ecosystem before going public.

AI chip firm Cerebras Systems files to withdraw its highly anticipated US listing

(Reuters) -AI chip startup Cerebras Systems, which competes with industry leader Nvidia in the booming AI chip market, on Friday filed to withdraw its plans for an initial public offering in the United States, effective immediately. Its withdrawal comes as U.S. IPO activity picks up in recent months, reversing an earlier slowdown caused by trade-policy uncertainty, with recent listings drawing strong investor demand. Cerebras on Tuesday said it raised $1.1 billion in a funding round led by Fidelity Management & Research and Atreides Management, valuing the company at $8.1 billion. "Given that Cerebras just very recently completed a sizeable fund raise, it is of no surprise that they are holding off to pursue the IPO at this time," said Josef Schuster, CEO of IPO research firm IPOX. Last year, Cerebras filed for an initial public offering on the Nasdaq. The company's highly anticipated listing was delayed by a U.S. national security review of a $335 million investment by G42, an Abu Dhabi-based cloud computing and AI company. "We believe this is more a company-specific strategic decision and does not tell us anything about the state of U.S. IPO sentiment, which we view as exceptionally strong," Schuster added. Sunnyvale, California-based Cerebras Systems makes high-performance AI chips and systems designed to speed up training and running large AI models, offering faster and cheaper alternatives to traditional GPUs. (Reporting by Prakhar Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)