Cerebras nearly doubles in Nasdaq debut, capping largest US semiconductor listing
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The news: Cerebras Systems nearly doubled in its Nasdaq debut, capping the largest US tech IPO since Uber’s 2019 listing.
The raising is also the largest-ever US semiconductor listing, topping Arm Holdings’ USD5.23 billion raising in 2023 and gives Cerebras a fully diluted market value of more than USD100 billion.
Shares opened at USD350 against an IPO price of USD185, before paring back some gains to trade 78% higher at USD328 each in mid-afternoon in New York.
The context: Cerebras makes large Wafer-Scale Engine chips optimised for fast AI inference, the process by which models quickly interpret and respond to prompts, and claims its hardware runs AI models 15 times faster than competitors.
What they said: The Sunnyvale, California-based AI chipmaker raised USD5.55 billion, nearly 60% more than its original target, after pricing above a range that was itself revised higher earlier this week, with the offer more than 25 times oversubscribed, chief executive Andrew Feldman told Bloomberg.
“Nobody wants to wait,” Feldman said. The company counts OpenAI and Amazon Web Services among its customers.
In January it struck a deal to supply OpenAI with computing capacity.
“We’re just at the beginning of AI being useful. And the more AI is useful, the more tokens are needed. And we make the fastest token.”
“Fast inference will be a fundamental part of the inference market. We have a shot to take a meaningful portion of it. We have to execute. We have a great deal of work ahead of us.”
The sources: Bloomberg, CNBC, The Wall Street Journal
