Cerebras IPO Mints Billions for Benchmark – But the VC Almost Skipped the Meeting
Some of the best investment decisions in venture capital history almost never happen. The Cerebras IPO Benchmark billions story is one of them and it started with a reluctant VC and a meeting he almost cancelled.
Benchmark general partner Eric Vishria has been a Cerebras board member since 2016, the year the AI chip maker was founded, having co-led its $25 million Series A round. But Vishria told TechCrunch he dragged his feet before agreeing to take the meeting at all. Benchmark almost never backs hardware companies, and Vishria only 18 months into his career as a VC at the time kept muttering to himself, “Why did I take this meeting?” He even messaged his calendar assistant to ask why she had let it happen.
One Slide Changed Everything
His frustration dissolved by the third slide. CEO Andrew Feldman argued that GPUs actually underperform for deep learning they just happened to be a hundred times better than CPUs. The moment Vishria heard it, he said a light bulb went off: “Why would a graphics processor be the right thing for AI?”
What followed was 8.5 years of grind. Feldman and co-founder Sean Lie had to invent new cooling methods to keep the giant chip from burning, and engineer a machine that could drill 40 screws into a wafer simultaneously without cracking it. Hardware is unforgiving, and Vishria repeatedly asked himself what they were doing. The company had raised half a billion dollars from a long list of investors before its chips were even finished, and had to raise again in the brutal 2022 VC bear market.
Then the tide turned. Around 18 months ago, Cerebras’ chips designed for AI training turned out to be even better suited for inference. OpenAI and AWS became major customers. Revenue doubled. The company declared a profit.
At the Cerebras IPO opening price of $185, Benchmark’s 17.6 million shares were worth $3.3 billion rising past $5.3 billion when the stock traded above $300 on its first day. The Cerebras IPO Benchmark billions outcome cost the firm roughly $270 million across all rounds. As for the assistant Vishria blamed for booking that first meeting? He laughed and said she would do very well.
