Andrew Feldman, co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems, speaks at the Collision conference in Toronto on June 20, 2024.
Ramsey Cardy | Sports Archive | Conflict | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence chip startup Cerebras Systems on Monday filed its prospectus for an initial public offering, with plans to trade under the symbol “CBRS” on the Nasdaq.
Cerebras competes with Nvidiawhose graphics processing units are the industry’s choice for training and running artificial intelligence models. Cerebras says on its website that its WSE-3 chip has more cores and memory than Nvidia’s popular H100. It’s also a physically larger chip. In addition to selling chips, Cerebras offers cloud-based services based on its own computer clusters.
Cerebras had a net loss of $66.6 million in the first half of 2024 on sales of $136.4 million, according to the filing. For the first six months of 2023, the company had a net loss of $77.8 million and $8.7 million in sales.
For the full year 2023, Cerebras reported a net loss of $127.2 million on revenue of $78.7 million.
The company reported a net loss of $50.9 million on revenue of $69.8 million in the second quarter, compared with a loss of $26.2 million on revenue of $5.7 million in the same period a year earlier.
Operating expenses rose this year in part because of higher staff costs to support revenue growth, the company said.
AI chips are a growing and crowded market. Cloud providers Amazon, Google and Microsoft have developed their own AI chips. The company said Group 42, a UAE-based artificial intelligence firm that counts Microsoft as an investor, accounted for 83% of Cerebras’ revenue last year.
Cerebras’ WSE-3 chip is an example of new silicon from startups designed to run and train artificial intelligence.
Brain Systems
In addition to Nvidia, Cerebras lists AMD, Intel, Microsoft and Google as competitors, “as well as internally developed custom application-specific ICs and a variety of private companies.”
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company makes the Cerebras chips. Cerebrus warned investors that any potential supply chain disruption could hurt the company.
Cerebras was founded in 2016 and is based in Sunnyvale, California. Andrew Feldman, the startup’s co-founder and CEO, has sold server startup SeaMicro to AMD for $355 million in 2012.
The company he said in 2021 it was valued at over $4 billion in a $250 million funding round. In May, G42 committed to buy $1.43 billion in orders from Cerebra before March 2025, according to the filing. G42 currently owns less than 5% of Cerebras’ Class A shares, and the company has the option to buy more depending on the amount of Cerebras products it buys.
The tech IPO market was generally thin in 2024 as higher interest rates pushed investors toward profitable assets. Social networking app Reddit went public on the New York Stock Exchange in March, and data management software maker Rubrik followed in April. Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve made its first rate cut since 2020, sparking gains in the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite.
Neither Morgan Stanley nor Goldman Sachs, the two leading technology investment banks, are participating in the deal. Citigroup and Barclays are leading the bid.
The largest investor in Cerebras is venture capital firm Foundation Capital, followed by Benchmark and Eclipse Ventures. Alpha Wave, Coatue and Altimeter each own at least 5% as well, according to the filing. Other investors include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim. The only person who owns 5% or more is Feldman.
CLOCK: Cerebras CEO: Our inference offering is 20x faster than Nvidia and a fraction of the price
