Cerebras Systems files for IPO after landing $20 billion OpenAI deal and challenging Nvidia

Reviewed byNidhi Govil

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Cerebras Systems, an AI chipmaker building wafer-scale processors, has filed publicly for an IPO months after withdrawing a previous attempt. The company brought in $510 million in revenue in 2025 with a $24.6 billion backlog, including a massive $20 billion deal with OpenAI. But despite 20x revenue growth since 2022, Cerebras remains operationally unprofitable with 86% of revenue coming from just two customers.

Cerebras Systems Returns to Public Markets with Massive OpenAI Partnership

Cerebras Systems, a startup developing what CEO Andrew Feldman calls "the fastest AI hardware for training and inference," has filed publicly for an IPO, marking its second attempt to enter public markets

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. The AI chipmaker previously filed for an initial public offering in 2024, but that effort was delayed due to a federal review of an investment from Abu Dhabi-based G42 and was ultimately withdrawn

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. The Sunnyvale, California-based company filed publicly with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday, aiming to list on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol "CBRS"

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Source: Benzinga

Source: Benzinga

The timing reflects renewed momentum in the IPO market as optimism builds around artificial intelligence workloads and a broader revival in listings

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. Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays, and UBS are leading the offering, with a spokesperson telling the Wall Street Journal that the IPO is planned for mid-May

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. Current market expectations point to a roughly $3 billion fundraising target, significantly higher than earlier $1 billion plans

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Explosive Revenue Growth Fueled by OpenAI and AWS Deals

Cerebras brought in $510 million in revenue in 2025, according to the filing, representing explosive 20x growth from $24.6 million in 2022

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. The company reported net income of $237.8 million in 2025, a dramatic reversal from a net loss of $481.6 million in 2024

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In recent months, Cerebras announced an agreement with Amazon Web Services to use Cerebras chips in Amazon data centers, as well as a deal with OpenAI initially reported at more than $10 billion

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. That OpenAI partnership has since expanded to an agreement worth over $20 billion, with OpenAI receiving warrants to buy Cerebras shares

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. In January, Cerebras touted plans to provide up to 750 megawatts of computing power to OpenAI through 2028

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. Feldman boasted to the Wall Street Journal: "Obviously, [Nvidia] didn't want to lose the fast inference business at OpenAI, and we took that from them"

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Wafer-Scale AI Processors Challenge Nvidia's Dominance

Cerebras positions itself as a Nvidia rival and AI infrastructure company, not just a maker of AI accelerators

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. The company designs a full stack including its wafer-scale engine (WSE)—literally a full silicon wafer turned into one processor—systems, and software, delivered as rack-scale systems

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. The wafer-scale AI processors pack around 900,000 compute cores, 44 GB of on-chip SRAM, and 21 PB/s of on-chip bandwidth, with an architecture that avoids inter-chip communication bottlenecks

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Source: NYT

Source: NYT

For years, Cerebras sought to sell chips to companies, but it has begun operating the chips inside its own data centers as a cloud service on behalf of clients

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. The infrastructure firm is part of a growing cohort seeking to challenge market leader Nvidia with giant chips that can handle massive amounts of data in one go

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. Andrew Feldman has said that Cerebras' hardware runs AI models much faster than Nvidia

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Source: Reuters

Source: Reuters

Profitability Concerns Despite Massive $24.6 Billion Backlog

While Cerebras reported GAAP net income of $237.8 million in 2025, this figure is misleading as the profit did not come from its core business but from an accounting adjustment

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. The company recorded a $363 million gain from a change in the fair value and extinguishment of a forward contract liability

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. Excluding certain one-time items, Cerebras posted a non-GAAP net loss of $75.7 million

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. Operating losses totaled $145.9 million in 2025, and Cerebras has never been profitable

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Another concern is revenue concentration: approximately 86% of Cerebras' revenue comes from just two customers—G42 and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI)—making the company dependent on a handful of large, project-based deployments

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. The remaining 14% of revenue is generated by a fragmented base of smaller enterprise, government, and cloud customers

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However, Cerebras now has a massive $24.6 billion backlog, including the $20 billion OpenAI deal, which provides strong demand visibility

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. The company expects to recognize approximately 15% of this revenue within the first 24 months through December 31, 2027, 43% during months 25 to 48, and the remainder thereafter

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Valuation Surge and Expanding Customer Base

In February, Cerebras raised about $1 billion in a funding round that valued the firm at $23 billion including money raised

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. The funding was led by Tiger Global Management with participation from investors including Benchmark, Fidelity Management & Research Co., and Advanced Micro Devices

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. This fresh valuation represented a significant increase from a September funding round that valued the company at $8.1 billion

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Cerebras postponed its IPO plans in 2024 after a national security review examined its ties with Abu Dhabi-based G42 amid concerns about potential foreign access to advanced AI processors

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. G42 is both a customer and investor of Cerebras, controlling a 1% stake in the company that it acquired for $40 million in 2021

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. Cerebras said last March that all open issues with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US had been resolved .

Another major expansion could be on the way. On Oracle's March earnings call, CEO Clay Magouyrk mentioned that the database and cloud company offers chips from Cerebras and other suppliers

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. The recent agreements with OpenAI, Amazon Web Services, and potentially Oracle will diversify revenue streams for the data center operator beyond its historical reliance on G42 and MBZUAI

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