A year after filing to IPO, still-private Cerebras Systems raises $1.1B

Nvidia rival Cerebras Systems raised a caller circular of backstage financing despite its previous program beryllium trading on the nationalist marketplace by 2025.  

Silicon Valley-based Cerebras announced it raised a $1.1 cardinal Series G circular connected Tuesday that valued the AI hardware institution at $8.1 billion. The circular was co-led by Fidelity and Atreides Management with information from Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners, and 1789 Capital, among others.  

Cerebras, which was founded successful 2015 and offers chips, hardware systems and unreality services specifically designed for AI, has now raised astir $2 billion in its 10-year history. Its most recent prior financing was a $250 cardinal Series F circular successful 2021 that was led by Alpha Wave Ventures and valued the institution astatine much than $4 billion.  

This latest backing round follows a twelvemonth of explosive growth, Andrew Feldman, Cerebras co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. Feldman said this maturation is tied to the company’s AI inference services, the process of utilizing AI models to generate outputs, which were released in August 2024.  

“By [the 2nd quarter] of 2024, we came to judge that [we] had crossed a tipping constituent successful which the AI that had been made was becoming useful, and that means you would spot an detonation of request for inference,” Feldman said. “We reallocated immoderate resources, we hired much people, and successful August, we launched our inference cloud, and the request has been overwhelming.” 

The institution has opened 5 caller information centers successful 2025 to location its AI hardware successful locations including Dallas, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Santa Clara, California; among others locales, with much successful the works in areas including Montreal and Europe.  

Expanding its information halfway footprint and U.S. manufacturing hubs are largely where this caller circular of backing volition beryllium put, successful summation to immoderate tech advances Feldman didn’t delve into. 

Raising this latest funding wasn’t likely Cerebras’ initial plan as the company initially filed paperwork for an IPO exactly a twelvemonth ago, September 30, 2024. It ran into regulatory delays soon after.  

The company’s IPO was initially delayed because of a reappraisal by the Committee connected Foreign Investment successful the United States owed to a $335 cardinal concern from G42, an Abu Dhabi-based unreality and AI company. The IPO was further delayed in aboriginal 2025 due to unfilled positions successful CFIUS astatine the opening of President Donald Trump’s term.  

Feldman said that the institution inactive plans to IPO, but wouldn’t share specifics. He said that the institution is pursuing a communal path for late-stage startups of raising a ample backing circular from largely public investors before listing on the nationalist marketplace itself.  

“We chose a tiny fig of leaders who would assistance us, not conscionable successful this round, but successful the future,” Feldman said. “Companies that are leaders successful late-stage private [fundraising], but predominantly do public. And you know, it’s our aspiration to beryllium a nationalist company.”