Cerebras Systems Pulls Plug On Its IPO Days After Big Fundraise

Just days after raising $1.1 billion in funding, AI processor developer Cerebras Systems has filed to withdraw its hotly anticipated initial public offering.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company announced on Sept. 30 a Series G funding round that valued it at $8.1 billion post-money. Fidelity and Atreides Management led the financing.

Then on Oct. 3, the startup submitted a letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, formally requesting to withdraw its IPO registration because it “does not intend to conduct the proposed offering … at this time.”

Cerebras originally filed to go public in September of 2024. At that time, the company was “ramping up to take on Nvidia in an effort to create processors for running generative AI models,” CNBC reports.

In its filing, Cerebras noted its dependence on a single customer, Group 42, a subsidiary of its investor G42, responsible for more than 80% of revenue in 2023 and the first half of 2024.

Cerebras has built a larger chip that is 10x faster for AI training and inference compared to leading GPU solutions, according to the company. Its customers include Mistral AI and the Mayo Clinic.

The company has reportedly shifted its focus since that initial filing from selling systems toward more of being a cloud service provider for accepting incoming queries to models that use its chips underneath, according to CNBC. CEO Andrew Feldman told the publication that he thought last year’s prospectus was “out of date” considering developments in AI.

Cerebras has raised a known $1.8 billion in funding since its 2016 founding by Feldman, per Crunchbase data. It raised $250 million in a Series F round led by Alpha Wave Ventures in November 2021 that valued the company at just over $4 billion. Other backers include Sequoia Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Eclipse Ventures, Benchmark and Coatue.

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Illustration: Dom Guzman