OpenAI’s convenient partner, Cerebras, is on track for a massive IPO

In the long-running saga that is Cerebras Systems’ IPO, the finish line is finally in sight. The artificial intelligence chip maker said Monday that it is preparing to sell 28 million shares at $115 to $125 per share. This would raise $3.5 billion and give it a market value of $26.6 billion at the cap.

That would be a nice bump in just a couple of months for late investors who piled into a $1 billion Series H at a $23 billion valuation in February. That would be a boon for OpenAI and a few of its executives.

If Cerebras launches an IPO at or above the cap, it will be the largest technology IPO in 2026 so far. It could also demonstrate a desire to have larger offerings in the wings, such as SpaceX and perhaps OpenAI and Anthropic.

Cerebras offers a proprietary AI chip called Wafer-Scale Engine 3 that challenges GPU-based AI chips. Cerebras says its chip is faster at inference while using less power than those competitors. Heuristics are the computation required to process user claims.

A long list of big investors will benefit from a good IPO. Alpha Wave by Rick Gerson; The Standard (via partner Eric Vicheria); Eclipse of Lior Susan; Sincerity. and Foundation Capital (via partner Steve Vassallo) are the largest shareholders with a stake of more than 5%, according to the company’s filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The company says the list of investors also includes 1789 Capital, Abu Dhabi Growth Fund, Abu Dhabi G42, AlphaWave Global, Altimeter, AMD, Atreides Management, Kuato, More Strategic Ventures, Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners, and VY Capital.

Additionally, Cerebras mentions on its website a long list of angel investors as well. These include OpenAI founder and CEO Sam Altman, OpenAI founder and CEO Greg Brockman, former OpenAI chief scientist (now founder of his own AI startup) Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI board member and Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo, Sun Microsystems co-founder and Arista Andy Bechtolsheim, Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, and many other prominent figures in the technology space.

While Sam Altman’s stake was not large enough to disclose in SEC filings, it was quoted in the S-1. This is because Cerebras’ relationship with OpenAI is more noteworthy than that of angel investors.

This relationship has been presented as evidence by Elon Musk in his lawsuit with OpenAI. OpenAI at one point considered acquiring Cerebras, according to legal filings from Musk’s lawyers that claim he was unaware of all of OpenAI executives’ personal investments in the company.

That deal never happened, but OpenAI became one of Cerebras’ largest customers. In fact, in December, OpenAI loaned Cerebras $1 billion, with collateral allowing OpenAI to buy more than 33 million shares, its S-1 revealed. So, while OpenAI is not a large shareholder now, it could become one.

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

A year later, Cerebras sought to raise more money. In September, it raised $1.1 billion at a post-cash valuation of $8.1 billion led by Fidelity and Atreides. A few months later, Cerebras signed its new multi-year, $10+ billion agreement with OpenAI that included the loan and guarantees. In February, it raised $1 billion in Series H, its latest massive round.

If investors buy into the IPO, OpenAI and its executives stand to gain in more ways than one.

That seems likely. Banks are already placing $10 billion in orders to buy $3.5 billion worth of shares on offer, Bloomberg reported. This type of order indicates that a company is likely to price its shares above this stated range, raising more money for itself and more value for its investors.