Cerebras Eyes 2025 IPO After U.S. Green Light for UAE Investment

Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman has expressed hopes for the company to go public in 2025, following approval from the U.S. government to sell shares to a UAE-based entity. When asked about the likelihood of an IPO this year, Feldman stated, "That's our hope."

Cerebras, a chip manufacturer for AI workloads, filed for an IPO in September but has not yet disclosed details regarding its size or timing. Earlier this year, the company received consent from a U.S. committee to sell shares to Group 42, an AI firm supported by Microsoft in the UAE. This approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) signified a pivotal step in their pursuit of becoming public. A notable competitor of Cerebras is Nvidia, whose GPUs are widely used for AI model training and operation. Over 85% of Cerebras' revenue in the first half of 2024 stemmed from Group 42.

Since early 2022, the IPO market for tech stocks has been largely stagnant, impacted by rising inflation and interest rates, which led investors to withdraw from riskier assets. Following its filing, Cerebras was poised to become a prominent pure AI IPO but experienced delays.

In contrast, CoreWeave, another AI infrastructure firm, successfully went public in March, seeing its market valuation soar by approximately 65% since the IPO. Signs of recovery in the IPO market are emerging, with recent listings such as eToro on Nasdaq and upcoming plans for Hinge Health's public offering.

The Middle East is increasingly pivotal for AI expansion. Reports indicate that Group 42 plans to purchase 100,000 GPUs annually as part of a broader U.S.-UAE agreement. In discussions with the media, Feldman emphasized the importance of being "part of the big leagues," hinting at forthcoming developments beyond public announcements, although he refrained from divulging further specifics.

Beyond Microsoft, Cerebras has also engaged Meta and IBM as customers. Feldman previously hinted that the company anticipates securing another "hyper-scale" client by mid-2025. In a recent conversation, he mentioned, "We're nearing another deal. I think they haven't been the fastest to respond."

Earlier, Cerebras revealed advancements that allow their chips to run Alibaba's open-source model at a lower cost and faster speed compared to OpenAI's GPT-4.1 model.