AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems has raised one billion dollars in fresh funding, pushing its valuation to twenty three billion dollars, nearly three times higher than the eight point one billion dollars it commanded just six months ago. The round was led by Tiger Global, with a significant contribution from early backer Benchmark Capital, which invested at least two hundred and twenty five million dollars. Benchmark, which first backed Cerebras in 2016, reportedly created two special purpose investment vehicles to support the latest funding, underscoring its long term confidence in the company’s trajectory.
Founded ten years ago and based in Sunnyvale, California, Cerebras has carved out a distinct position in the fiercely competitive AI hardware space through the sheer scale of its technology. Its flagship Wafer Scale Engine chip, unveiled in 2024, is built from almost an entire silicon wafer and contains about four trillion transistors. Unlike conventional chips that rely on clusters of smaller processors, Cerebras’ design integrates roughly nine hundred thousand specialized cores into a single unit, reducing data movement and dramatically speeding up AI computation. The company says this approach enables inference tasks to run more than twenty times faster than rival systems.
The new funding comes as Cerebras gains momentum in large scale AI infrastructure. Last month, the company signed a multi year agreement valued at over ten billion dollars to supply OpenAI with seven hundred and fifty megawatts of computing power through 2028, a move aimed at improving response times for complex AI queries. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman is also an investor in Cerebras, while the company continues to position its proprietary systems as faster alternatives to Nvidia’s dominant chips.
Cerebras’ journey to the public market has not been without hurdles. Its heavy revenue dependence on G42, a United Arab Emirates based AI firm, previously triggered a national security review in the United States due to G42’s past links with Chinese technology companies. That scrutiny delayed earlier IPO plans and led to the withdrawal of a filing in early 2025. With G42 now removed from its investor list, Cerebras is preparing for a renewed initial public offering, which it is targeting for the second quarter of 2026, according to Reuters.