Cerebras files to go public on Nasdaq after dramatic turnaround to profitability

Filing and financials

Cerebras, the Sunnyvale startup that builds massive chips for running AI models, filed to go public on Nasdaq under the ticker CBRS. The company reported $510 million in revenue for 2025, up nearly 76% year‑over‑year, and swung to an $87.9 million net income after a $485 million loss in 2024. That kind of reversal is the headline — from deep red to green in a single year. Who saw that coming? Investors will be parsing the filing for sustainability, customer concentration and whether this is a durable business or a one‑time bounce.

Customers, deals and OpenAI

Customer mix shifted sharply: UAE-based G42 fell to 24% of 2025 revenue from a dominant role in early 2024, while Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence accounted for 62% of 2025 revenue, according to the filing. Cerebras has also moved from selling chips to operating them as a cloud service, competing directly with the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet, Oracle and CoreWeave. Big strategic tie‑ins stand out — Cerebras agreed to supply up to 750 megawatts of compute to OpenAI through 2028 in a deal it values at more than $10 billion, and OpenAI can buy an additional 1.25 gigawatts through 2030. It has been reported that the expanded relationship could be worth over $20 billion. The filing also notes a $1 billion loan from OpenAI and a warrant allowing OpenAI to buy up to 33.4 million non‑voting Class N shares.

Why it matters

This IPO attempt comes after Cerebras pulled its 2024 paperwork to add financial and strategy detail, and follows a roller‑coaster funding story — a February raise of $1 billion at a $23 billion price tag and an earlier September round that implied an $8.1 billion valuation. The stakes are high: customers building generative AI models still rely heavily on Nvidia GPUs, but Cerebras pushes a playbook of wafer‑scale chips that it says are faster and cheaper for certain workloads. Retail investors are hungry for big tech IPOs — Anthropic and OpenAI chatter aside — and underwriters Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays and UBS will do their best to feed that demand. The big questions going forward? Can Cerebras diversify its customer base, sustain profits, and prove it's more than a bespoke supplier with a few very large partners?

Sources: cnbc.com