Cerebras, a manufacturer of AI chips, aims for an IPO of up to $4 billion, with a valuation of $40 billion.

      After a retreat caused by CFIUS in 2024, the wafer-scale chip startup has returned with a deal with OpenAI and a more aggressive stance against Nvidia.

      Eighteen months prior, Cerebras Systems appeared as a cautionary example. The AI chip startup based in Sunnyvale had initiated plans for an initial public offering in September 2024, only to see those plans halted due to a national-security review involving its largest client.

      By October 2025, the registration was rescinded. The company, known for producing the largest commercial silicon chip globally, was not defeated but rather quietly sidelined.

      Now, it seems to have returned with greater ambitions.

      On Friday, Bloomberg reported that Cerebras is looking to raise up to $4 billion in its IPO, with a valuation of around $40 billion, according to sources familiar with the situation. This figure is notable.

      It is nearly five times the $8.1 billion valuation Cerebras held in private markets as recently as September 2025 and significantly higher than the $22 billion to $25 billion range that industry analysts expected when the company refiled its S-1 with the US Securities and Exchange Commission on April 17.

      Cerebras plans to list on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the ticker CBRS, with Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays, and UBS Investment Bank serving as joint book-running managers. If the pricing remains stable, this would mark the first significant AI hardware IPO of 2026 and one of the largest technology debuts in the US in recent times.

      Much of the renewed interest stems from a single contract. In its updated prospectus, Cerebras revealed a multi-year computing agreement with OpenAI valued at over $10 billion for its duration, covering up to 750 megawatts of inference capacity through 2028.

      For a company that reported $510 million in revenue for 2025, a 76 percent increase from the previous year, this deal is transformative. It also helps clarify the surge in valuation: Cerebras now has a key customer that investors prioritize above almost any other indicator in the AI infrastructure market.

      While the OpenAI contract doesn’t eliminate Nvidia, which continues to dominate the market for GPUs driving the majority of the industry’s training workloads, it does provide Cerebras with a credible position in inference, the segment of the AI stack focused on processing rather than building, where profit margins are quickly tightening.

      Cerebras’s wafer-scale processors are designed for this exact type of workload and are physically many times larger than an Nvidia H100.

      The initial IPO attempt for Cerebras faltered not due to technical issues but geopolitical factors. G42, an AI conglomerate based in Abu Dhabi with prior connections to Chinese partners, had become its largest customer and a significant shareholder, comprising 87 percent of Cerebras’s revenue in the first half of 2024.

      The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States initiated a review of G42’s stake, resulting in a pause in Cerebras's filing. CNBC reported that CFIUS clearance was finally granted on March 31, 2025, after G42 sold off its Chinese investments and agreed to restructure its Cerebras holdings into non-voting shares.

      The company’s S-1 reflects this hard-won resolution. While G42 retains an economic interest, its governance influence has diminished. Whether this will satisfy public-market investors who scrutinize foreign exposure in US chip companies remains uncertain. The prospectus's risk factors section addresses this extensively.

      In the gap between its first IPO abandonment and re-filing, Cerebras did what well-funded growth companies typically do when public offerings become unavailable: it raised additional capital privately. A $1.1 billion Series G round in September 2025 valued the company at $8.1 billion.

      A subsequent $1 billion Series H round in February 2026 increased this valuation to $23 billion, nearly tripling in five months. If the proposed $40 billion IPO valuation is realized, it would signify a further 74 percent increase in approximately three months.

      Investors will assess this upward trajectory against the actual financial performance. Revenue of $510 million is strong for a hardware company at this stage, and the OpenAI partnership provides forward visibility that few competitors can match. However, Cerebras still faces significant concentration risks, both in terms of customer diversity and reliance on a singular architectural approach.

      The distinctive wafer-scale design that sets it apart from Nvidia also complicates mass production, and analyst interpretations of the prospectus suggest that it does not yet demonstrate the gross-margin profile of a company that has resolved this challenge.

      Cerebras is entering a market that has been more cautious than recent headlines imply. Several large AI-related IPOs in late 2025 priced below their expected ranges, and bankers have privately signaled that public investors are no longer inclined to pay private-market multiples for unprofitable infrastructure ventures. A $4 billion raise at a $40 billion valuation would directly test