Cerebras, an OpenAI partner, is on track for a blockbuster IPO

In the long-running saga that is Cerebras Systems’ IPO, the finish line is near. AI chipmaker he said Monday that it plans to sell 28 million shares at $115 to $125 a share. That would raise $3.5 billion and give him a total of $26.6 billion at the top end.

This could be good in just a few months for late investors who piled in $1 billion Series H at a cost of $23 billion in February. It would also be an opportunity for OpenAI and some of its administrators.

If Cerebras goes public early or later, this will be the biggest IPO of 2026 so far. It could also confirm the interest of the largest wing offerings, such as SpaceX and possibly OpenAI and Anthropic.

Cerebras offers an AI chip called Wafer-Scale Engine 3 that challenges GPU-based AI chips. Cerebras claims its chip is comparatively faster while using less power than its competitors. Inference is the computation required for processing user requests.

A long list of well-known businesses benefit from a healthy IPO. Rick Gerson’s Alpha Wave; Benchmark (via partner Eric Vishria); Eclipse of Lior Susan; Loyalty; and Foundation Capital (through partner Steve Vassallo) are major shareholders with more than 5% of shares, according to SEC disclosure of the company.

The company says its list of investors also includes 1789 Capital, Abu Dhabi Growth Fund, Abu Dhabi’s G42, Altimeter, AMD, Atreides Management, Coatue, Moore Strategic Ventures, Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners, and VY Capital.

Also, Cerebras names on his page a long list of angel investors, too. These include OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI founder and president Greg Brockman, OpenAI chief scientist (now its AI founder) Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI board member and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, Sun Microsystems and Arista founder Andy Bechtolsheim, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, and many other techies.

Although Sam Altman’s stake was not large enough to disclose in SEC filings, it was reported in his S-1. That’s because Cerebras’ relationship with OpenAI is more transparent than that of angel investors.

This relationship was also demonstrated as evidenced by Elon Musk in his lawsuit with OpenAI. OpenAI once considered acquiring Cerebras, according to a legal filing from Musk’s lawyers who said they were unaware of all of OpenAI’s involvement in the company.

The deal never materialized, but OpenAI became one of Cerebras’ biggest customers. Instead, in December, OpenAI loaned Cerebras $1 billion, secured by warrants that allow OpenAI to buy more than 33 million shares, the S-1 reveals. So while OpenAI may not be a multi-shareholder, it can be one.

Cerebras had hoped to go public in 2024 but was delayed by a federal review of funding from Abu Dhabi-based cloud provider G42, which was (and still is, the chip company says) a major customer. That IPO attempt was aborted.

A year later, Cerebras wanted to raise more money. In September, it arose $1.1 billion of the $8.1 billion investment led by Fidelity and Atreides. A few months later, Cerebras signed their new multi-year deal in a very important way more than $10 billion and OpenAI which included credits and licenses. In February, it raised $1 billion Series H, its last round.

If investors eat up the IPO, then OpenAI and its management will benefit in more ways than one.

It seems possible. Banks have already started bidding for $10 billion of the $3.5 billion they are offering, Bloomberg reports. This type of demand indicates that the company may sell its shares higher than announced, raising more revenue and profits for investors.