Cerebras Systems Inc. has shelved its plan to go public on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
The company, which develops artificial intelligence chips for data centers, filed to list its shares last September. Cerebras today asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange to withdraw the filing. It didn’t provide a reason for the move.
“The Company is seeking the withdrawal of the Registration Statement because the Company does not intend to conduct the proposed offering that is described therein at this time,” Cerebras stated in its request to scrap the filing.
The move comes days after the chipmaker raised $1.1 billion in funding from a consortium led by Fidelity Management. It’s unclear if the two developments are connected, though it seems likely. Shortly after the raise, Cerebras Chief Executive Officer Andrew Feldman stated that the company was still seeking to list its shares. A spokesperson told CNBC today that Cerebras hopes to launch its initial public offering as soon as possible.
The tech industry has experienced only a handful of IPO filing withdrawals over the past decade. In 2019, WeWork Inc. had to scrap its listing after investors raised concerns about the viability of its business. Two years earlier, application observability provider AppDynamics Inc. canceled its IPO listing to accept a $3.3 billion acquisition offer from Cisco Systems Inc.
Given that Cerebras has stated it still plans to go public, the withdrawal of its IPO listing likely wasn’t motivated by an acquisition offer.
Sunnyvale, California-based Cerebras sells an AI chip called the WSE-3 that is nearly the size of an entire wafer. It features 4 trillion transistors made using Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.’s five-nanometer process. Those transistors are organized into 900,000 cores and 44 gigabytes of memory.
Usually, chips keep the AI software they run in external memory. As a result, they have to regularly move model data to and from their external memory, which slows down processing. The WSE-3’s large 44-gigabyte memory pool enables customers to run AI models entirely on-chip and thereby avoid the latency associated with external RAM.
Cerebras ships the chip as part of an appliance called the CS-3. The system combines a single WSE-3 with cooling equipment and other auxiliary hardware. In addition, Cerebras provides a cloud platform that enables developers to access its processors without taking on infrastructure maintenance tasks.
The company stated in its IPO filing that it generated $136.4 million in revenue during the first half of 2024, more than 10 times what it earned a year earlier. Cerebras’ losses narrowed by about $10 million in the same time frame.
After closing its $1.1 billion funding round earlier this week, Cerebras announced plans to add more data centers in the U.S. The company is building a half-dozen stateside facilities that will host thousands of CS-3 appliances. Additionally, Cerebras will use the capital to speed up its internal chip and packaging design projects.
Photo: Cerebras Systems
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