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Cerebras Soars, Then Slips, in 2026’s Biggest Tech IPO

The debut highlights Wall Street’s rush into AI infrastructure stocks.

Overview

  • Cerebras Systems, which priced at $185 on Thursday, raised $5.55 billion by selling 30 million shares on the Nasdaq under the ticker CBRS.
  • Shares opened at $350, spiked to $385 during a session that triggered a volatility halt, and closed at $311.07 on the first day.
  • Following Thursday’s surge, the stock fell about 10% on Friday as investors weighed an extreme valuation near 200 times last year’s sales.
  • The company reports a $24.6 billion backlog led by an OpenAI agreement exceeding $20 billion, a concentration that includes exclusivity and delay‑exit provisions, alongside an AWS deployment deal.
  • Cerebras sells a dinner‑plate‑size wafer‑scale processor built on TSMC’s 5‑nanometer node with about 4 trillion transistors and 900,000 cores, which it claims can run AI inference up to 15 times faster than GPU clusters, though analysts question flexibility and maturity.