'Nvidia competitor' Cerebras, aiming for 39 trillion won market cap upon listing, 'speed war'

'Nvidia competitor' Cerebras, aiming for 39 trillion won market cap upon listing, 'speed war'

Proposed offering price of $115-125 per share..."Appears to be pushing for listing before SpaceX IPO"

The target valuation of AI chip startup Cerebras, which challenges Nvidia with chips the size of an entire wafer, has been revealed to be $26.62 billion (approximately 39 trillion won).

Cerebras announced on the 4th (local time) in its amended listing application submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that it plans to offer 28 million shares of Class A common stock through this initial public offering (IPO).

Including the Class B shares already held by founders and existing investors, the total number of outstanding shares upon completion of the listing will be 212,965,381 shares.

Applying the proposed offering price of $115-125 per share, the market capitalization after listing would be up to $26.62 billion.

This is an increase from the $23 billion valuation recognized in a funding round in early February, with the addition of newly offered shares.

After the listing, the value of the approximately 10.25 million shares held by CEO Andrew Feldman is expected to be $1.28 billion, but CEO Feldman does not plan to sell his stake in this IPO.

Cerebras is a startup that champions Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE) technology, which turns an entire wafer into a single AI chip.

Its characteristic feature is the use of fast SRAM instead of D-RAM-based High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) to accelerate AI inference speeds.

Cerebras's revenue last year was $510 million, growing 75.7% from $290 million in 2024. During the same period, net profit also turned to a surplus at $1.38, from a loss of $9.9 in the previous year.

The listing application process is proceeding at an unusually fast pace. Just half a month after submitting the initial application on the 17th of last month, both the number of public offering shares and the proposed offering price, which are key listing conditions, were finalized.

Cerebras's rapid progress in the process is interpreted as an intention to list ahead of Elon Musk's space company, SpaceX.

Lukasz Muhlbauer, a researcher at IPOX Research, told Reuters, "There is a race (in the market) to complete a deal before SpaceX," adding, "There is concern that SpaceX's IPO will be large and highly visible, absorbing most of investors' attention and capital."

The speed of Cerebras's listing process also appears to be influenced by the fact that this is its second IPO application.

Cerebras had previously pursued a listing in September 2024 but voluntarily withdrew it in October of last year after an investment by UAE company G42 became an issue, leading to an investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).