Cerebras Systems has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In the filing, the American artificial intelligence (AI) chip start-up revealed a threefold surge in its annual revenue for 2023 at $78.7m, up from revenues of $24.6m posted for the year ended 31 December 2022.
The company generated revenue of $136.4m for the six months ended 30 June 2024 compared to $8.7m, made in the corresponding period of the prior year.
Since its founding in 2016, Cerebras Systems had been hit with operating losses and negative cash flows. The AI company’s net loss for 2023 was $127.2m, while it was $177.7m the year before. For the six months ended 30 June 2024, its net loss was $66.6m, a reduction of 14% YoY compared to $77.8m in same period of the previous year.
Cerebras benefiting from AI chip demand boom
The growing interest in AI applications, such as ChatGPT, has boosted demand for semiconductors essential to power these technologies. Nvidia has seen its stock more than double in value this year, briefly surpassing Microsoft as the world’s most valuable company.
However, concerns over excessive optimism around AI-related stocks led some investors to withdraw from the technology sector earlier in the year. Cerebras Systems’ IPO is expected to be a key indicator of the market’s inclination for AI investments.
The California-based AI company did not reveal the terms or size of its offering.
Cerebras Systems is engaged in designing processors for AI training and inference. The company develops AI systems to power, cool, and feed the processor’s data. It also builds software to connect the systems together into simple-to-use supercomputers.
Furthermore, the American AI company uses supercomputers to perform inference at speeds unattainable on alternative commercial technologies. The AI capabilities are delivered to customers on-premise and through the cloud.
Earlier this year, Cerebras Systems claimed to have built the world’s “fastest” AI chip. Dubbed Wafer Scale Engine 3 (WSE-3), the chip has been purpose-built to train the largest AI models up to ten-times larger than GPT-4 and Gemini. This chip includes four trillion transistors, each of which is 5nm in size.
Abu Dhabi Growth Fund and Coatue Management are among the various high-profile investors that are backing the AI start-up. Cerebras Systems’ IPO is contingent upon market conditions and is uncertain of whether or when the offering will be completed. Through the IPO, the company intends to list its Class A common stock on the Nasdaq Global Market under the ticker symbol “CBRS.”
For the proposed IPO, Citigroup and Barclays are lead book-running managers, while UBS Investment Bank, Wells Fargo Securities, Mizuho, and TD Cowen are also acting as book-running managers. Craig-Hallum, Wedbush Securities, Needham & Company, Rosenblatt and Academy Securities are serving as co-managers.
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