Chipmaker Cerebras joins OpenAI’s inner circle – for a price

CEREBRAS Systems, a maker of chips used in artificial intelligence, considered going public roughly 18 months ago, and then changed its mind. It’s a good thing it did: the company is set to list its shares this week at a US$47 billion valuation that would have been unthinkable at the end of 2024.

What changed? Among other things, Cerebras managed to launch itself into Silicon Valley’s most glittering orbit: the Altman-osphere.

When it first tried for an initial public offering (IPO), Cerebras had a fascinating product, but not many buyers. Its chips, roughly the size of a dinner plate, outperform Nvidia’s coveted, much smaller GPUs by some measures, in part by obviating the need for external memory.