Cerebras IPO Soars 89% on Nasdaq in Biggest AI Chip Debut of 2026

Cerebras IPO Soars 89% on Nasdaq in Biggest AI Chip Debut of 2026

Wall Street got exactly the spectacle it was waiting for. The Cerebras IPO made its Nasdaq debut on Thursday, May 14, opening at $350 per share a stunning 89% jump above its IPO price of $185 and briefly pushing the AI chipmaker’s market cap past $100 billion.

Cerebras raised $5.55 billion through the sale of 30 million shares, making it one of the largest U.S. tech IPOs in years surpassing Snowflake’s 2020 offering and trailing only Uber’s $8 billion raise in 2019.

A Rocky Road to the Nasdaq

The Cerebras IPO did not arrive without drama. The company first filed to go public in September 2024, but withdrew its submission after its prospectus faced heavy scrutiny, largely due to its heavy dependence on a single customer in the UAE Microsoft-backed G42. It refiled in April 2026, this time showing a more diversified revenue base.

Institutional demand was fierce, with orders surpassing available shares by more than 20 times, forcing the company to revise both its price range and share count twice during the roadshow.

Cerebras has been shifting focus from selling hardware to providing cloud services powered by its chips, putting it in direct competition with Google, Microsoft, Oracle, and CoreWeave. To bolster that pivot, it secured a cloud deal with OpenAI worth more than $20 billion and, in March, struck a deal with Amazon Web Services to place its chips inside AWS data centers.

Arm Holdings and SoftBank made a last-minute acquisition bid before the IPO, which Cerebras declined.

The Cerebras IPO is now the opening bell of what could be a historic wave. SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are all expected to hit the market later this year.