Cerebras Systems went public on May 14 at $185 per share on Nasdaq (ticker: CBRS), raising $5.55 billion — the largest U.S. tech IPO since Uber in 2019. The stock opened at $350, hit an intraday high of $386 (up 108% from the IPO price), and closed at $311.07, a single-day gain of 68.2%. Valued at $23 billion in February, the company's market cap surpassed $95 billion on its first trading day.
A Bet on the Wafer-Scale Inference Chip
Cerebras' key weapon is the WSE-3 (Wafer-Scale Engine 3), a single chip built on TSMC's 5nm process covering the entire 300mm wafer. With 4 trillion transistors, 900,000 AI cores, and 44GB of on-chip SRAM, it offers 19x more transistors and roughly 90x more cores than NVIDIA's B200. Rather than competing in training, Cerebras targets AI inference — large language model real-time responses and high-concurrency workloads. That bet secured a massive deal: OpenAI signed a $20 billion inference contract covering 750MW of compute capacity over three years, with an option to expand to 2GW. Meta and AWS are also clients.
Yet the revenue structure of $510 million in 2025 (up 76% YoY) raises red flags: 62% came from MBZUAI in the UAE and 24% from G42, both identified as related parties in the S-1 filing. Combined, 86% of revenue depends on two entities in the same geographic sphere, tying contract stability to geopolitics rather than technology.
From Benchmark to 1789 Capital
Cerebras's funding history features a who's who of tech investors: Benchmark led a $27 million Series A in 2016; Sequoia and Altimeter followed. In 2021, Series F raised $250 million from Alpha Wave and Abu Dhabi Growth Fund. The inflection point was the $1.1 billion Series G in September 2025, led by Fidelity, with a newcomer: 1789 Capital, a venture fund co-founded by Donald Trump Jr. after his father's 2024 election win. Soon after the investment, the Pentagon awarded Cerebras a $45 million defense contract in April 2025. Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren and Richard Blumenthal questioned the deal, alleging "the Trump family is profiting from the national budget," noting that 1789 Capital's portfolio companies had secured over $70 million in government contracts.
While Cerebras' debut grabbed headlines, the concentration of revenue and political scrutiny will test whether the AI chip challenger can deliver sustainable growth.