According to the Financial Times, the Silicon Valley outfit, now valued at $8.1 billion, is pushing for an IPO to cash in on the feeding frenzy for advanced semiconductors driven by the AI bubble. Chips are the hottest commodity going for start-ups like OpenAI and Anthropic, not to mention the usual Big Tech suspects who need silicon to fuel their own AI models.
That frenzy has turned Nvidia into the world’s most valuable company, worth a staggering $4.4 trillion, thanks to its GPUs and the iron grip of its CUDA software ecosystem.
Cerebras boss Andrew Feldman insists his 10-year-old outfit can beat Nvidia at the jobs most AI systems do.
“We built the largest chip in the history of the computer industry. Our chip is the size of a dinner plate, most chips are the size of postage stamps. That allows us to achieve a performance you can’t achieve by lashing together smaller chips,” Feldman said.
Cerebras has already signed up Meta, Amazon Web Services, French AI shop Mistral, and various US government and healthcare customers.
Nvidia, meanwhile, is spraying money about to keep its grip on the market, throwing $5 billion at Troubled Chipzilla, pledging $100 billion to OpenAI and £500 million (€580 million) to UK cloud start-up Nscale in just the past month.
“When companies see their technical advantage diminish they start using their balance sheet,” Feldman said. “They are going to start trying to tie people up with their balance sheet rather than their technical advantage.”
Nvidia, never one to underplay itself, shot back: “Nvidia wins on merit, as reflected in our benchmark results and value to customers. Nvidia AI infrastructure provides an unparalleled combination of performance, versatility and value.”
Feldman said the IPO push is back on after a long delay caused by a Committee on Foreign Investment in the US review into Abu Dhabi’s G42, Cerebras’ biggest customer and still a major partner.
Despite the big numbers, Cerebras is not exactly rolling in cash. The outfit has been lossmaking since launch, chalking up a $67 million loss in the first half of 2024 against $136 million in revenues as it ploughed money into research and development.