OpenAI’s cozy partner Cerebras is on track for a major IPO

The long-running saga of Cerebras Systems’ IPO is finally nearing the finish line. The AI ​​chip maker announced Monday that it is preparing to sell 28 million shares at a price of $115 to $125 per share. This will raise $3.5 billion and give the company a maximum market cap of $26.6 billion.

For latecomers who shelled out for a $1 billion Series H in February at a $23 billion valuation, this would be a huge gain in just a few months. That would also be a boon for OpenAI and several of its executives.

If Cerebras achieves a higher-end initial public offering, it would be the largest tech IPO of 2026 so far. It could also prove its appetite for bigger blockbusters like SpaceX and perhaps OpenAI or Anthropic.

Cerebras offers an AI-only chip called Wafer-Scale Engine 3 that competes with GPU-based AI chips. Cerebras says its chips consume less power and provide faster inference than such competitors. Inference is the computation required to process a user prompt.

A long list of prominent investors could benefit from a healthy IPO. Rick Garson’s Alpha Wave. Benchmark (via partner Eric Vishria); Lior Susan’s Eclipse. Loyalty. According to the company’s SEC filings, Foundation Capital (via partner Steve Vassallo) is its largest shareholder with more than 5% ownership.

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

Additionally, Cerebras has a long list of angel investors on its website. These include Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, Greg Brockman, founder and president of OpenAI, Ilya Sutskeva, former chief scientist at OpenAI (now founder of his own AI startup), It includes board members and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, Sun Microsystems and Arista co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim, Intel CEO Lip Vu Tan, and several other big names in the technology world.

Sam Altman’s investment was not large enough to be disclosed in the SEC filing, but he is cited in the S-1. The relationship between Cerebras and OpenAI is even more noteworthy than that of an angel investor.

Elon Musk also submitted this relationship as evidence in his lawsuit with OpenAI. OpenAI at one point considered acquiring Cerebra, according to a filing by Musk’s lawyers, who claim Musk was unaware of all of OpenAI executives’ personal investments in the company.

Although the deal did not materialize, OpenAI became one of Cerebras’ largest customers. In fact, in December, OpenAI loaned Cerebras $1 billion, which was secured by warrants that allowed OpenAI to buy more than 33 million shares, the S-1 revealed. Therefore, although OpenAI is not currently a major shareholder, it has the potential to become one.

Cerebras had hoped to go public in 2024, but that was delayed due to a federal government review of its investment from Abu Dhabi-based cloud provider G42. G42 was (and still is, according to the chip company) a major customer. That IPO attempt was ultimately shelved.

A year later, Cerebras sought to raise even more money. In September, it raised $1.1 billion led by Fidelity and Atreides at a post-money valuation of $8.1 billion. A few months later, Cerebras signed a new multi-year agreement with OpenAI worth more than $10 billion, including loans and warrants. In February, it raised $1 billion in its final mega-round, Series H.

If investors devour the IPO, OpenAI and its management could benefit in a number of ways.

I think that’s highly likely. Banks have already received $10 billion worth of orders for $3.5 billion worth of shares, Bloomberg reported. This kind of demand means the company is likely to price its stock even higher than this announced range, raising more cash for itself and creating even more value for investors.