In the long saga that is the IPO of Cerebras Systems, the finish line is finally in sight. The AI chip maker saying Monday that it is preparing to sell 28 million shares at between $115 and $125 each. This would raise $3.5 billion and give it a market cap of $26.6 billion on the high end.
It would be a nice boost in just a couple of months for late investors who piled into their $1 billion Series H to a valuation of $23 billion in February. It would also be a big help to OpenAI and some of its executives.
If Cerebras conducts an IPO at the upper or higher tier, this will be the largest technology IPO of 2026 so far. It could also demonstrate appetite for even bigger blockbuster deals, such as SpaceX and possibly OpenAI and Anthropic.
Cerebras offers a specific AI chip called Wafer-Scale Engine 3 that challenges GPU-based AI chips. Cerebras says its chip is faster at performing inferences and uses less power than its competitors. Inference is the calculation necessary to process user input.
A long list of big-name investors will benefit from a healthy IPO. Alpha Wave by Rick Gerson; Benchmark (via partner Eric Vishria); The Eclipse by Lior Susan; Fidelity; and Foundation Capital (through partner Steve Vassallo) are its largest shareholders with more than 5% ownership, according to to the company’s SEC filing.
The company says its investor list also includes 1789 Capital, Abu Dhabi Growth Fund, Abu Dhabi’s G42, Alpha Wave Global, Altimeter, AMD, Atreides Management, Coatue, Moore Strategic Ventures, Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners and VY Capital.
Furthermore, the names of Cerebras in your website There is also a long list of angel investors. They include OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI founder and president Greg Brockman, former OpenAI chief scientist (now founder of his own AI startup) Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI board member and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, Sun Microsystems and Arista co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, and several other luminaries of the technology.
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While Sam Altman’s stake was not large enough to disclose in SEC filings, it was cited in his S-1. This is because Cerebras’ relationship with OpenAI is even more notable than that of its angel investors.
This relationship was even presented as evidence from Elon Musk in his lawsuit with OpenAI. OpenAI had at one point considered acquiring Cerebras, according to legal documents from Musk’s lawyers who claim he was unaware of all of OpenAI executives’ personal investments in the company.
That deal never happened, but OpenAI became one of Cerebras’ largest customers. In fact, in December, OpenAI loaned Cerebras $1 billion, secured by collateral that allows OpenAI to purchase more than 33 million shares, the S-1 reveals. So while OpenAI isn’t a big shareholder now, it could become one.
Cerebras had hoped to go public in 2024, but it was delayed by a federal review of an investment by Abu Dhabi-based cloud provider G42, which was (and remains, according to the chip company) a major customer. That IPO attempt was eventually shelved.
A year later, Cerebras tried to raise more cash. In September, got up $1.1 billion with a post-money valuation of $8.1 billion led by Fidelity and Atreides. A few months later, Cerebras signed its new multi-year agreement for a more of $10 billion with OpenAI that included the loan and warrants. In February, it raised the $1 billion Series H, its latest mega round.
If investors buy into the IPO, OpenAI and its executives will come out ahead in more ways than one.
That seems likely. Banks are already taking $10 billion worth of orders for the $3.5 billion worth of shares on offer. Bloomberg Reports. That kind of demand indicates that the company will likely price its shares even above the announced range, raising even more cash for itself and more value for its investors.
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