Cerebras Surges 70% in Debut, Market Cap Tops $100 Billion

U.S. AI chipmaker's IPO, largest since Uber's in 2019, highlights growing valuations in AI sector amid anticipated mega listings

Cerebras, a U.S. artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaker dubbed the "NVIDIA contender," surged nearly 70% above its public offering price on its first day of listing. At one point during trading, its market capitalization exceeded $100 billion, equivalent to Hanwha Group's total assets of approximately 149 trillion Korean won, ranking fifth among South Korean conglomerates by asset size. As the multi-year AI boom continues to drive up valuations of AI startups, expectations are growing that this year will see a series of "mega initial public offerings (IPOs)."

Cerebras concluded trading at $311.07 on the Nasdaq on the 14th, local time, marking a 68.15% increase from its public offering price of $185. Earlier in the day, Cerebras' initial price surged above $350, pushing its market capitalization past $100 billion (approximately 149 trillion Korean won) during intraday trading. This matched the total assets of Hanwha Group, South Korea's fifth-largest conglomerate by total assets (approximately 149 trillion Korean won). However, it relinquished some gains by the closing bell, with its market capitalization settling at around $95 billion. Through this IPO, Cerebras raised a total of $5.55 billion (approximately 8.3 trillion Korean won) by selling 30 million shares. This is the largest IPO by a U.S. tech company since Uber's in 2019.

Cerebras possesses Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE) technology, which transforms a single wafer into a massive AI chip. This structure integrates computation and memory on a large silicon wafer, featuring fast SRAM instead of DRAM-based high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to enhance AI inference speeds. Leveraging this technology, Cerebras is targeting niche markets in the AI sector with specialized chips that emphasize speed and cost efficiency. Demand for Cerebras' chips is rapidly growing, exemplified by a reported large-scale AI infrastructure deal with OpenAI valued at over $20 billion (approximately 29 trillion Korean won).

This year is set to see IPOs from several U.S. tech companies that have grown amid the AI boom. Following OpenAI's "ChatGPT moment" in November 2022, AI companies have rapidly expanded as competition in AI technology development accelerated. Now, three to four years later, several of these companies are preparing to debut on the stock market.

OpenAI is being mentioned as a potential IPO candidate with a valuation of up to $1 trillion. Reuters reported, "OpenAI is considering submitting IPO documents to securities authorities as early as the second half of 2026, with initial discussions suggesting the possibility of raising at least $60 billion."

Anthropic has also garnered recent attention. According to Bloomberg, the company is discussing a plan to raise at least $30 billion, which would value it at over $900 billion pre-investment. If this deal materializes, it could surpass OpenAI's recent valuation of $852 billion. With enterprise AI products gaining popularity, some speculate that Anthropic's market value could exceed NVIDIA's upon its listing.

Other next-generation IPO candidates include AI cloud company Lambda and AI data center firm Crusoe.