Cerebras Systems Raises $1.1 Billion in Pre-IPO Funding Round, Challenging Nvidia in AI Chip Market

A year after filing to IPO, still-private Cerebras Systems raises $1.1B | TechCrunch

Nvidia rival Cerebras Systems raised a new round of private financing despite its previous plan be trading on the public market by 2025. Silicon Valley-based Cerebras announced it raised a $1.1 billion Series G round on Tuesday that valued the AI hardware company at $8.1 billion. The round was co-led by Fidelity and Atreides Management with participation from Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners, and 1789 Capital, among others. Cerebras, which was founded in 2015 and offers chips, hardware systems and cloud services specifically designed for AI, has now raised almost $2 billion in its 10-year history. Its most recent prior financing was a $250 million Series F round in 2021 that was led by Alpha Wave Ventures and valued the company at more than $4 billion. This latest funding round follows a year of explosive growth, Andrew Feldman, Cerebras co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. Feldman said this growth is tied to the company's AI inference services, the process of using AI models to generate outputs, which were released in August 2024. "By [the second quarter] of 2024, we came to believe that [we] had crossed a tipping point in which the AI that had been made was becoming useful, and that means you would see an explosion of demand for inference," Feldman said. "We reallocated some resources, we hired more people, and in August, we launched our inference cloud, and the demand has been overwhelming." The company has opened five new data centers in 2025 to house its AI hardware in locations including Dallas, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Santa Clara, California; among others locales, with more in the works in areas including Montreal and Europe. Expanding its data center footprint and U.S. manufacturing hubs are largely where this recent round of funding will be put, in addition to some tech advances Feldman didn't delve into. Raising this latest funding wasn't likely Cerebras' initial plan as the company initially filed paperwork for an IPO exactly a year ago, September 30, 2024. It ran into regulatory delays soon after. The company's IPO was initially delayed because of a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States due to a $335 million investment from G42, an Abu Dhabi-based cloud and AI company. The IPO was further delayed in early 2025 due to unfilled positions in CFIUS at the beginning of President Donald Trump's term. Feldman said that the company still plans to IPO, but wouldn't share specifics. He said that the company is following a common path for late-stage startups of raising a large funding round from largely public investors before listing on the public market itself. "We chose a small number of leaders who would help us, not just in this round, but in the future," Feldman said. "Companies that are leaders in late-stage private [fundraising], but predominantly do public. And you know, it's our aspiration to be a public company."

AI chip firm Cerebras raises $1.1 billion, adds Trump-linked 1789 Capital as investor

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 30 (Reuters) - Cerebras Systems, a Silicon Valley startup aiming to take on Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab by producing a dinner-plate-sized AI computing chip, on Tuesday said it raised $1.1 billion and added 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, as an investor. Cerebras said the funding round, which was led by Fidelity Management & Research Co and Atreides Management, brings the company's valuation to $8.1 billion. The deal added investors Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners and 1789 Capital, the fund where President Donald Trump's son is a partner. Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman told Reuters in an interview that 1789's involvement was led by Paul Abrahimzadeh, an investment banker and veteran of Citigroup, which Cerebras had previously tapped to lead an initial public offering. "They're putting a lot of money to work. And it was somebody we knew," Feldman said . Cerebras last year filed for an initial public offering on Nasdaq. The offering was delayed by U.S. national security review of a $335 million investment by G42, an Abu Dhabi-based cloud computing and AI company. Cerebras said in March that the investment by G42, which in 2023 signed a deal to source supercomputers from the startup, had received clearance from the Trump administration. Feldman said the company still plans to hold a public offering. "It is very common in your path to an IPO to gather some additional capital very late in the game from world-class institutional investors," Feldman said. The computers Cerebras built for G42 have so far been in the United States. Last year, the company announced an agreement to supply computers to Aramco, the Saudi oil giant. Middle East deals will require export licenses from the Trump administration. "We hold the license for the delivery of some equipment, and we're seeking the license for the ability to ship more equipment," Feldman said. Citigroup and Barclays Capital acted as joint placement agents for the transaction, and existing investors Altimeter, Alphawave and Benchmark joined the round, Cerebras said. Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Nvidia challenger Cerebras raises $1.1bn ahead of IPO

Chipmaker Cerebras Systems has raised more than $1bn from investors including Fidelity and Donald Trump Jr's firm 1789 Capital as it looks to woo customers away from rival Nvidia. The Silicon Valley start-up, which will be valued at $8.1bn after the investment, is targeting an initial public offering to cash in on increased demand for advanced semiconductors triggered by the artificial intelligence boom. Chips have become the most sought-after commodity for start-ups such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Big Tech groups seeking to train and run their own AI models. That has propelled Nvidia to become the world's most valuable company, with a market capitalisation of $4.4tn. Nvidia's dominance stems from the strength of its graphics processing units, or GPUs, in training AI models, and the popularity of its widely used Cuda software. But Cerebras chief executive Andrew Feldman claims his 10-year-old company's technology is faster than Nvidia at managing the coding and natural language queries that make up the bulk of AI tools' usage. "We built the largest chip in the history of the computer industry. Our chip is the size of a dinner plate, most chips are the size of postage stamps," said Feldman. "That allows us to achieve a performance you can't achieve by lashing together smaller chips." Nvidia has compounded its advantage by funnelling its vast revenues into a series of investment deals with AI model developers and infrastructure groups around the world. Those deals have included a $5bn investment into Intel, a $100bn commitment to OpenAI and a £500mn commitment to cloud computing start-up Nscale in the past month alone. "When companies see their technical advantage diminish they start using their balance sheet," said Feldman. "[Nvidia] are going to start trying to tie people up with their balance sheet rather than their technical advantage." Nvidia said that it "wins on merit, as reflected in our benchmark results and value to customers. Nvidia AI infrastructure provides an unparalleled combination of performance, versatility and value." Cerebras customers include Meta, Amazon Web Services and French AI lab Mistral, as well as a number of US government departments and healthcare institutions. Fidelity Management & Research Company and Atreides Management, founded by former Fidelity portfolio manager Gavin Baker, led the funding round. Tiger Global and Valor Equity Partners, a backer of a number of Elon Musk's companies, also participated -- alongside 1789 Capital, where President Donald Trump's son is a partner. Cerebras was still targeting a public listing in the near term, said Feldman. Cerebras kicked off its IPO process a year ago, but was delayed by a Committee on Foreign Investment in the US review of an investment in the company by Abu Dhabi AI group G42, which remains Cerebras' largest customer and a key partner. The review was resolved in March this year, Feldman said, clearing the way to go public. Cerebras has been lossmaking since its launch, as it invests heavily in research and development. The company does not publish up-to-date financial metrics, but disclosed last year that its net loss in the first half of 2024 was $67mn, with revenues of $136mn.

AI chip company Cerebras raises $1 billion in pre-IPO funding round

Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman, front row, second from left, participates in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the company's data center in Oklahoma City on Sept. 22, 2025. AI chipmaker Cerebras filed to go public exactly a year ago. The company has yet to take the plunge, but has now bought itself more time to stay private. Cerebras said Tuesday that it's raised $1.1 billion in new funding at a valuation of $8.1 billion as it tries to take on Nvidia, the world's most valuable company, in the booming market of artificial intelligence chips. In its IPO prospectus, Cerebras calls itself a designer of chips for training and running AI models, and the company has prioritized operating a cloud-based service that AI models can use to handle incoming queries. Shortly after Cerebras filed for its initial public offering last September, the company faced public criticism that it was too reliant on a single Middle Eastern customer, G42. Cerebras hit a snag seeking clearance from the Treasury Department's Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., or CFIUS, to give G42 a bigger position. Despite the lengthy delay, private market investors are bullish enough to about double the company's valuation from $4 billion in 2021. Co-founder and CEO Andrew Feldman said in an interview that Cerebras still intends to go public. "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." Feldman told reporters in May that the startup aspired to go public in 2025. There are plenty of high-valued AI companies raising large sums of money in the private market. Databricks, a seller of data analytics software, recently said it was closing a $1 billion funding round with a valuation above $100 billion. OpenAI said last week that Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in the company as it builds out data centers, and Anthropic announced earlier in September that it raised $13 billion in funding at a $183 billion valuation. Investors in Cerebras' funding round include 1789 Capital, Alpha Wave, Altimeter Capital, Atreides Management, Benchmark, Fidelity, Tiger Global and Valor Equity Partners. "It was with investors who everybody would be proud of to have cornerstone your IPO," Feldman said. The new money will allow for an expansion in U.S. manufacturing, he said. After Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing produces Cerebras' chip wafers, they're packaged in the U.S. As demand increases, Cerebras plans to hire more people to focus on production. "We increased manufacturing capacity in the last 18 months 8x, and we are going to go another 4x in the next six or eight months," Feldman said. Feldman declined to talk about recent financials. The company generated about $70 million in revenue in the second quarter of 2024, compared with less than $6 million in the period a year earlier.

AI Inference Chip Company Cerebras Raises $1.1 Bn at $8.1 Bn Valuation | AIM

The company said it will use the funds to expand its technology portfolio in AI processor design, system design, and AI supercomputers. AI inference chip company Cerebras Systems has raised $1.1 billion in an oversubscribed Series G funding round, valuing the company at $8.1 billion post-money. The round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Atreides Management, with participation from Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners, and 1789 Capital. Existing backers Altimeter, Alpha Wave, and Benchmark also took part. Citigroup and Barclays Capital acted as joint placement agents. The company said it will use the funds to expand its technology portfolio in AI processor design, system design, and AI supercomputers. Cerebras also plans to increase U.S. manufacturing and data center capacity to meet growing demand. "From our inception, we have been backed by the most knowledgeable investors in the industry. They have seen the historic opportunity that is AI and have chosen to invest in Cerebras," said Andrew Feldman, co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems. Cerebras, which launched its inference service in late 2024, claims its systems outperform NVIDIA GPUs by more than an order of magnitude on open-source models, according to third-party benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis. "Since our founding, we have tested every AI inference provider across hundreds of models. Cerebras is consistently the fastest," said Micah Hill-Smith, CEO of Artificial Analysis. The company said its performance advantage has led to adoption by enterprises, governments, and developers. Current users include AWS, Meta, IBM, Mistral, Cognition, AlphaSense, Notion, GlaxoSmithKline, Mayo Clinic, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of Defense. On Hugging Face, Cerebras is one of the top inference providers, handling over 5 million monthly requests.

Cerebras secures $1.1B at $8.1B valuation to fuel US AI infrastructure leadership - SiliconANGLE

Cerebras secures $1.1B at $8.1B valuation to fuel US AI infrastructure leadership Artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems Inc. said today it raised $1.1 billion in Series G funding, bringing its post-money valuation to $8.1 billion, as demand for AI inference services continues to surge. The round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Atreides Management, joined by well-known venture firms including Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners and 1789 Capital. Existing backers Altimeter, Alpha Wave and Benchmark also participated. Cerebras is best known for its wafer-scale processors, dinner-plate-sized chips purpose-built to accelerate AI training and inference. The company delivers ultra-fast inference services through its silicon infrastructure. In a recent demonstration, Cerebras said its system ran OpenAI's newest open-source model, gpt-oss-120B, at around 3,000 tokens per second, a breakthrough in responsiveness for extremely large AI models. Tokens are how an AI model breaks down text into manageable pieces for analysis and output generation. They can be words, parts of words or punctuation. How fast a model can read and generate tokens speaks to how quickly the model responds and completes generating answers. Cerebras claims to be the fastest inference provider in the world, citing benchmark results showing it outperforms Nvidia Corp.'s graphics processing units by more than 20x on both open-source and closed-source models. "Since our founding, we have tested every AI inference provider across hundreds of models. Cerebras is consistently the fastest," said Micah Hill-Smith, chief executive of leading benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis. The company's customer base spans the AI industry, from cloud providers and model developers to enterprises and government agencies. This year, AI leaders have partnered with the company, including Amazon Web Services Inc., Meta Platforms Inc., IBM Corp. and Mistral AI SAS. Other customers include enterprise companies and governments, such as GSK plc, Mayo Clinic, the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Defense. The company said it serves trillions of tokens per month across its own cloud services, on-premise and across partner platforms. The company's ultra-high speed inference capabilities have delivered over 5 million monthly requests on Hugging Face Inc., the leading AI hub for developers, making it the top provider on the site. To meet rising demand, Cerebras announced in March that it began deploying its wafer-scale chips across six new cloud data centers in North America and France. "Cerebras is turbocharging the future of U.S. AI leadership with unmatched performance, scale and efficiency -- these new global data centers will serve as the backbone for the next wave of AI innovation," said Dhiraj Mallick, chief operating officer of Cerebras Systems. With its new $1.1 billion infusion, Cerebras plans to expand processor design, packaging and system innovations for AI supercomputers. The company also said funds will go toward boosting manufacturing and data center capacity in the United States.

AI chip firm Cerebras raises $1.1 billion, adds Trump-linked 1789 Capital as investor - The Economic Times

Cerebras said the funding round, which was led by Fidelity Management & Research Co and Atreides Management, brings the company's valuation to $8.1 billion.Cerebras Systems, a Silicon Valley startup aiming to take on Nvidia by producing a dinner-plate-sized AI computing chip, on Tuesday said it raised $1.1 billion and added 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Donald Trump Jr is a partner, as an investor. Cerebras said the funding round, which was led by Fidelity Management & Research Co and Atreides Management, brings the company's valuation to $8.1 billion. The deal added investors Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners and 1789 Capital, the fund where President Donald Trump's son is a partner. Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman told Reuters in an interview that 1789's involvement was led by Paul Abrahimzadeh, an investment banker and veteran of Citigroup, which Cerebras had previously tapped to lead an initial public offering. "They're putting a lot of money to work. And it was somebody we knew," Feldman said . Cerebras last year filed for an initial public offering on Nasdaq. The offering was delayed by U.S. national security review of a $335 million investment by G42, an Abu Dhabi-based cloud computing and AI company. Cerebras said in March that the investment by G42, which in 2023 signed a deal to source supercomputers from the startup, had received clearance from the Trump administration. Feldman said the company still plans to hold a public offering. "It is very common in your path to an IPO to gather some additional capital very late in the game from world-class institutional investors," Feldman said. The computers Cerebras built for G42 have so far been in the United States. Last year, the company announced an agreement to supply computers to Aramco, the Saudi oil giant. Middle East deals will require export licenses from the Trump administration. "We hold the license for the delivery of some equipment, and we're seeking the license for the ability to ship more equipment," Feldman said. Citigroup and Barclays Capital acted as joint placement agents for the transaction, and existing investors Altimeter, Alphawave and Benchmark joined the round, Cerebras said.

AI chip firm Cerebras raises $1.1 billion, adds Trump-linked 1789 Capital as investor

SAN FRANCISCO -- Cerebras Systems, a Silicon Valley startup aiming to take on Nvidia NVDA.O by producing a dinner-plate-sized AI computing chip, on Tuesday said it raised US$1.1 billion and added 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, as an investor. Cerebras said the funding round, which was led by Fidelity Management & Research Co and Atreides Management, brings the company's valuation to $8.1 billion. The deal added investors Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners and 1789 Capital, the fund where U.S. President Donald Trump's son is a partner. Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman told Reuters in an interview that 1789's involvement was led by Paul Abrahimzadeh, an investment banker and veteran of Citigroup, which Cerebras had previously tapped to lead an initial public offering. "They're putting a lot of money to work. And it was somebody we knew," Feldman said . Cerebras last year filed for an initial public offering on Nasdaq. The offering was delayed by U.S. national security review of a $335 million investment by G42, an Abu Dhabi-based cloud computing and AI company. Cerebras said in March that the investment by G42, which in 2023 signed a deal to source supercomputers from the startup, had received clearance from the Trump administration. Feldman said the company still plans to hold a public offering. "It is very common in your path to an IPO to gather some additional capital very late in the game from world-class institutional investors," Feldman said. The computers Cerebras built for G42 have so far been in the United States. Last year, the company announced an agreement to supply computers to Aramco, the Saudi oil giant. Middle East deals will require export licenses from the Trump administration. "We hold the license for the delivery of some equipment, and we're seeking the license for the ability to ship more equipment," Feldman said. Citigroup and Barclays Capital acted as joint placement agents for the transaction, and existing investors Altimeter, Alphawave and Benchmark joined the round, Cerebras said.

AI chip firm Cerebras raises $1.1 billion, adds Trump-linked 1789 Capital as investor

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Cerebras Systems, a Silicon Valley startup aiming to take on Nvidia by producing a dinner-plate-sized AI computing chip, on Tuesday said it raised $1.1 billion and added 1789 Capital, the venture firm where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner, as an investor. Cerebras said the funding round, which was led by Fidelity Management & Research Co and Atreides Management, brings the company's valuation to $8.1 billion. The deal added investors Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners and 1789 Capital, the fund where President Donald Trump's son is a partner. Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman told Reuters in an interview that 1789's involvement was led by Paul Abrahimzadeh, an investment banker and veteran of Citigroup, which Cerebras had previously tapped to lead an initial public offering. "They're putting a lot of money to work. And it was somebody we knew," Feldman said . Cerebras last year filed for an initial public offering on Nasdaq. The offering was delayed by U.S. national security review of a $335 million investment by G42, an Abu Dhabi-based cloud computing and AI company. Cerebras said in March that the investment by G42, which in 2023 signed a deal to source supercomputers from the startup, had received clearance from the Trump administration. Feldman said the company still plans to hold a public offering. "It is very common in your path to an IPO to gather some additional capital very late in the game from world-class institutional investors," Feldman said. The computers Cerebras built for G42 have so far been in the United States. Last year, the company announced an agreement to supply computers to Aramco, the Saudi oil giant. Middle East deals will require export licenses from the Trump administration. "We hold the license for the delivery of some equipment, and we're seeking the license for the ability to ship more equipment," Feldman said. Citigroup and Barclays Capital acted as joint placement agents for the transaction, and existing investors Altimeter, Alphawave and Benchmark joined the round, Cerebras said. (Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)