Cerebras Systems, one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched AI chip startups, has withdrawn its plans for an initial public offering just three days after announcing a $1.1 billion funding round that doubled its valuation to $8.1 billion.
The company formally requested the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to withdraw its registration statement, originally filed in September 2024, under Rules 418, 457(p), and 477 of the Securities Act. CEO Andrew Feldman said the decision was made because the original S-1 no longer reflected the company’s financial performance or business structure after a year of rapid growth.
“Over the course of the last year, the filing had grown stale,” Feldman wrote. “Given that the business has improved in meaningful ways, we decided to withdraw so that we can refile with updated financials and strategy information, including our approach to the rapidly changing AI landscape.”
Feldman added that the company’s intention to go public “has not changed” and that it plans to submit a new filing when the updated materials are ready.
IPO on Pause
Cerebras filed its S-1 last year as the AI hardware market entered a period of record investor enthusiasm. But in the twelve months since, the company’s financial position and business model have shifted substantially.
The company reported record revenue in 2024 and said it expects another record year in 2025. According to filings, Cerebras generated $136.4 million in revenue during the first half of 2024, more than ten times the amount it reported a year earlier. Its inference business, now a key growth driver, is expanding rapidly as the company transitions from selling hardware systems to offering cloud-based AI compute services.
None of these developments were reflected in the original S-1, which listed older figures and predated its latest funding round. Feldman said withdrawing and refiling is “a procedural step” that allows Cerebras to present a more accurate picture to potential investors.
Record Funding and a Shift in Business Model
The Series G round announced on September 30 brought in Fidelity Management & Research and Atreides Management as lead investors, alongside Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners, 1789 Capital, and existing backers Altimeter, Alpha Wave Global, and Benchmark. The round, which Feldman described as “oversubscribed,” was the largest in the company’s history.
“From our inception we have been backed by the most knowledgeable investors in the industry,” Feldman said. “They have seen the historic opportunity that is AI and have chosen to invest in Cerebras.”
Cerebras said the new funding will be used to expand U.S. manufacturing and data center capacity and to accelerate work on its AI supercomputers and processor design. The company claims it has increased manufacturing capacity eightfold in the past 18 months and plans to expand it another fourfold over the next six to eight months.
The company’s latest processor, the Wafer Scale Engine 3, contains 4 trillion transistors and 900,000 cores, making it 56 times larger than Nvidia’s H100 GPU. Cerebras markets it as the world’s fastest inference engine, used in large-scale AI infrastructure projects across government, cloud, and research institutions.
Regulatory Scrutiny and Market Headwinds
Cerebras’s IPO path has not been straightforward. The company faced delays in 2024 due to a national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States concerning a $335 million investment from Abu Dhabi-based AI firm G42. The company eventually received clearance but did not move forward with a listing immediately.
Feldman has previously acknowledged that Cerebras’s original prospectus was written before the company’s model shift toward cloud services. “It was outdated given how much the business has changed,” he said. A company spokesperson also clarified that the recent U.S. government shutdown did not influence the timing of the withdrawal.
Investor Confidence and Market Context
The timing of the withdrawal, days after a billion-dollar raise led to speculation about whether Cerebras was reconsidering a public debut. But IPO analysts say the move is more likely administrative than strategic.
“Given that Cerebras just completed a sizeable fundraise, it is of no surprise that they are holding off on the IPO at this time,” said Josef Schuster, CEO of IPO research firm IPOX. “This looks more like a timing issue than a reflection of market weakness.”
Data from Kalshi’s prediction markets showed the probability of a Cerebras IPO in 2025 falling slightly from 18% to 17% after the announcement, suggesting investors still expect the company to go public once updated materials are filed.
Building Out the AI Backbone
Cerebras operates in one of the most capital-intensive sectors of the AI economy. The company competes in a market dominated by Nvidia, which controls more than 90% of AI GPU shipments. Rivals such as AMD, Intel, and startups like Groq are also expanding aggressively as global demand for AI compute surges.
Cerebras’s long-term strategy centers on building large-scale AI infrastructure rather than consumer-facing products. Feldman said the new round will help the company expand its Inference Service and grow its AI supercomputing footprint in the U.S. “We are building the backbone of the world’s AI infrastructure,” he wrote.
Private investors have remained supportive despite the IPO delay. Feldman noted that the company’s backers “are the kind of investors anyone would be proud of” and that their capital will fund aggressive U.S. expansion ahead of the public offering.
The AI hardware boom has sent valuations soaring across the industry, with data centers, automakers, and cloud providers spending billions to secure compute capacity. Yet several high-profile AI firms like Anthropic, OpenAI, and now Cerebras have chosen to remain private even as public investor enthusiasm reaches record levels.
IPO expert Schuster said Cerebras’s move should not be seen as a signal of weakness in the broader market. “Investor sentiment for AI-linked listings remains exceptionally strong,” he said. “This is a company-specific decision.”
