Cerebras Systems wins Wall Street backing as AI chip strategy targets $292B inference market

Cerebras shares climb as Wall Street brokerages back AI chip strategy

June 8 (Reuters) - Cerebras shares gained on Monday as multiple Wall Street firms initiated coverage with bullish calls after the quiet period, backing the chip designer's unconventional AI strategy more than three weeks after its strong debut. Shares of the company (CBRS.O), opens new tab rose 5.5% in premarket trading, with at least nine brokerages -- including IPO bookrunners Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays and UBS -- initiating coverage of the stock. The California-based firm designs wafer-scale engine chips roughly the size of a dinner plate to speed up processing, challenging traditional ⁠GPU-based systems, like those of Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab, that rely on clusters of interconnected chips. "As AI workloads become increasingly reasoning-intensive, demand for fast, low-latency inference is growing rapidly," said Morgan Stanley analysts led by Joseph Moore, who rate the stock "overweight". "This is a unique chance to invest in an AI processor company with a first-mover advantage against Nvidia, and offers substantial upside as the category evolves." Citigroup expects Cerebras' shares to hit $340 in the next 12 months, according to LSEG-compiled data. IPO underwriters can ⁠publish research on a stock 25 days after listing. Cerebras counts Amazon.com (AMZN.O), opens new tab and Sam Altman's OpenAI as customers and is also backed by the ChatGPT maker and Japanese investment giant SoftBank (9984.T), opens new tab. The latter reportedly sought to take the chip designer private before its debut. Cerebras debuted ⁠on the tech-heavy Nasdaq (.IXIC), opens new tab more than three weeks ago and closed about 70% above its initial public offering price of $185. However, its shares have since lost about 36%, as of ⁠last close, on concerns the global tech rally had run too far, while investors also priced in hawkish Federal Reserve monetary policy for the rest ⁠of the year amid the Middle East conflict. The Philadelphia SE Semiconductor Index (.SOX), opens new tab is up 60% this quarter, on track for its biggest quarterly gain since January 2000. Reporting by Johann M Cherian in Bengaluru; Editing by Vijay Kishore Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Cerebras Gains As Analysts Back AI Chip Strategy, See Upside Ahead - Cerebras Systems (NASDAQ:CBRS)

Why Cerebras Stock Could Overtake Nvidia In $292 Billion AI Inference War Cerebras Systems Inc (NASDAQ:CBRS) stock gained on Monday after multiple Wall Street firms initiated coverage. Several Wall Street firms initiated coverage on Cerebras, with a consensus price forecast of $295 based on seven analysts, alongside a $340 high forecast (Citigroup) and a $270 low forecast (Wedbush). * Cerebras Systems shares are climbing with conviction. What's driving CBRS stock higher? The three most recent ratings came from TD Cowen, UBS, and Citigroup, and those three carry an average price forecast of $305 -- implying about 28% upside from the current tape. Bolton Sees Fast Inference Driving Demand Bolton said Cerebras is the only supplier of Wafer-Scale Engines, which offer far more SRAM capacity and memory bandwidth than other AI processors. He said the technology is built for low-latency inference workloads such as real-time coding and instant research agents. The analyst said that agentic AI should increase demand for fast inference because reasoning and agentic workloads require multiple passes through large language models, thereby increasing compute needs per query. He cited Bloomberg estimates showing the inference market growing from $66 billion in 2025 to about $292 billion by 2029, a 45% compound annual growth rate, and said inference spending should overtake training spending in 2026. OpenAI and AWS Could Drive Upside Bolton said Cerebras' January 2026 agreement with OpenAI marks the most important deal in the company's history. Under the take-or-pay deal, OpenAI will deploy about 750 megawatts of Cerebras compute capacity through 2028, with an option for another 1.25 gigawatts. He said the OpenAI agreement adds a low-latency inference tier to OpenAI's infrastructure and should help open the market for fast inference. Bolton also highlighted Cerebras' AWS collaboration for disaggregated inference, in which AWS Trainium3 chips would handle prefilling, and Cerebras CS-3 systems would handle decoding. Wafer-Scale Design Creates A Performance Gap Bolton said Cerebras' wafer-scale architecture gives the company advantages in core count, SRAM capacity, and memory bandwidth. He said the Wafer-Scale Engine integrates 44GB of SRAM, compared with about 178 MB on NVIDIA Corp's (NASDAQ:NVDA) B200 GPU. Because Cerebras keeps SRAM on-chip instead of relying on off-chip HBM, Bolton said the platform offers 2,625 times the memory bandwidth of a B200 GPU and enables 15 times faster inference. He said Cerebras' decade of wafer-scale experience makes that technology lead durable. CBRS Price Action CBRS Stock Price Activity: Cerebras Systems shares were up 21.97% at $245.75 at the time of publication on Monday, according to Benzinga Pro data. Photo via Shutterstock Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

Cerebras Likely to Benefit From Low Latency Inference Demand, Morgan Stanley Says

Cerebras Systems Inc. is an artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company that designs and manufactures an AI compute platform comprised of proprietary systems and software. The Company's products include inference Cloud, Training Cloud, CS-3 system, AI supercomputer, Wafer Scale Engine and model development. The Company's pioneering Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE), a chip encompassing an entire silicon wafer, was specifically designed to enable higher performance and speeds than GPUs for the computational demands of inference, Generative AI (GenAI), and other AI applications. It offers deployment services to assist customers with data preparation, model architecture design, training management, inference optimization, and, in select cases, ongoing system operations and management. It also offers a subscription service providing access to an ongoing stream of software updates and upgrades for purchasers of its hardware.

Cerebras shares climb as Wall Street brokerages back AI chip strategy

Cerebras Systems Inc. is an artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company that designs and manufactures an AI compute platform comprised of proprietary systems and software. The Company's products include inference Cloud, Training Cloud, CS-3 system, AI supercomputer, Wafer Scale Engine and model development. The Company's pioneering Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE), a chip encompassing an entire silicon wafer, was specifically designed to enable higher performance and speeds than GPUs for the computational demands of inference, Generative AI (GenAI), and other AI applications. It offers deployment services to assist customers with data preparation, model architecture design, training management, inference optimization, and, in select cases, ongoing system operations and management. It also offers a subscription service providing access to an ongoing stream of software updates and upgrades for purchasers of its hardware.

Rosenblatt Securities Initiates Coverage on Cerebras Systems With Buy Rating

Cerebras Systems Inc. is an artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company that designs and manufactures an AI compute platform comprised of proprietary systems and software. The Company's products include inference Cloud, Training Cloud, CS-3 system, AI supercomputer, Wafer Scale Engine and model development. The Company's pioneering Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE), a chip encompassing an entire silicon wafer, was specifically designed to enable higher performance and speeds than GPUs for the computational demands of inference, Generative AI (GenAI), and other AI applications. It offers deployment services to assist customers with data preparation, model architecture design, training management, inference optimization, and, in select cases, ongoing system operations and management. It also offers a subscription service providing access to an ongoing stream of software updates and upgrades for purchasers of its hardware.

Mizuho Initiates Cerebras Systems at Outperform

Cerebras Systems Inc. is an artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure company that designs and manufactures an AI compute platform comprised of proprietary systems and software. The Company's products include inference Cloud, Training Cloud, CS-3 system, AI supercomputer, Wafer Scale Engine and model development. The Company's pioneering Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE), a chip encompassing an entire silicon wafer, was specifically designed to enable higher performance and speeds than GPUs for the computational demands of inference, Generative AI (GenAI), and other AI applications. It offers deployment services to assist customers with data preparation, model architecture design, training management, inference optimization, and, in select cases, ongoing system operations and management. It also offers a subscription service providing access to an ongoing stream of software updates and upgrades for purchasers of its hardware.