Two months ago, Cerebras was looking to raise $2 billion in its IPO. The new target is twice that, and the order book is already bigger than the deal.
The Sunnyvale-based AI chipmaker is now seeking up to $4 billion at a value of around $40 billion, per a Bloomberg report. Banks running the deal have already received soft orders above $10 billion, with formal IPO marketing set to start as soon as Monday.
Why The Target Doubled
Cerebras filed its IPO papers with the SEC in mid-April under the ticker CRBS, after pulling its first try at going public last year. The firm makes specialty AI chips made to compete with Nvidia, which now leads the market for training the kind of large AI models that power ChatGPT and similar tools.
Two recent deals reset the firm's growth story. Cerebras signed a deal with Amazon Web Services to put its chips inside AWS data centers, and it locked in a reported $10 billion deal with OpenAI for compute.
Together, those contracts give the IPO a story that wasn't there a year ago, which is why bankers are lifting the target. Investors are betting Cerebras becomes the second name they buy in AI chips after Nvidia, instead of one of the half-dozen that fade.
The Numbers Behind The Hype
Cerebras pulled in $510 million of revenue in 2025, with reported net income of $237.8 million. After stripping out one-time items, though, the firm actually posted a $75.7 million loss.
That's a small revenue base for a $40 billion value, so investors are paying for what's coming, not what's already there. The OpenAI deal alone is worth about 20 times last year's revenue if it pays out as reported.
The risk is that Cerebras has to deliver on those contracts in a market where Nvidia keeps tightening its grip and a half-dozen other AI chip startups are also raising money.
For context, Nvidia trades at around 22 times sales, so Cerebras at $40 billion on $510 million of revenue is asking for a much richer multiple than the market leader. That gap is the single biggest thing investors will weigh between now and pricing.
What To Watch
Cerebras is targeting a mid-May listing on the Nasdaq Global Select Market. Formal pricing will be the first real read on whether the $40 billion number holds up under scrutiny.
Roadshow meetings starting Monday will give bankers a clearer view of how serious the $10 billion order book actually is. For investors watching the AI trade, this is the first major chip IPO of the year, so how it lands will set the tone for the next wave of deals lined up behind it.
The pricing call is the one to circle.
