Athira Sethu
Kochi, 1 October 2024
Artificial intelligence chipmaker, Cerebras Systems Inc has filed an Initial Public Offering (IPO) with the US market regulator, a Bloomberg report said.
According to its filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), sales of Cerebras Systems jumped to $136.4 million for the first half of this year, from $8.7 million for the same period last year. Its loss in the six month period stood at $66.6 million as compared to $77.8 million recorded a year ago.
With artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chips ruling the roost globally, chipmakers with such capacity are witnessing high demand. Cerebras’ flagship system, CS-3 has the capacity to handle AI computing workloads. It can be used to leverage AI-powered supercomputers.
Cerebras Systems is seen a company with potential to challenge the dominance of established chipmakers like Nvidia. According to the filing, the company counts Group 42 Holding Ltd as its biggest client with most of its earnings coming from this Abu Dhabi-based company.
In the first half of this year, G42 was responsible for 87 percent of Cerebras’ sales, up from 83 percent a year earlier. Because the company relies on G42 for the bulk of its business, it has to work out the complexities of the US government rules to ship its products abroad, especially a license from the Department of Commerce. To date, all of the Cerebras systems sold to G42 are being used in US data centers.
If Cerebras IPO goes through successfully, this may increase the number of tech IPOs this year. According to reports, so far this year, tech IPOs have only raised $6.7 billion, compared to last year’s $8.3 billion during the same period. Overall, IPOs are rising in the US; as of now, they have raised $33.5 billion this year, which denotes an increase of 53% compared to last year.
Companies, research organizations, and governments use Cerebras’s products for building custom AI models and training open-source models. In 2021, the firm raised $250 million in a financing round that valued the company at over $4 billion. Prominent investors that back it include Alpha Wave Ventures and G42.
