📈 Cerebras and the IPO pop
Wall St is finally grasping AI inference demand
Cerebras Systems, which makes massive, beautiful chips for AI workloads, hit the Nasdaq yesterday. At one point, the stock was up 157%, before settling for a more muted 107% return.
On the first day, IPO pops bring out the bears and cynics for good reason. The dotcom heyday was full of them. Calico Commerce, VA Linux, TheGlobe.com: each up 300%, 605% and 697.5% on day one, respectively. Remarkable performances, long-term disasters. VA Linux, the “best” of them, lost about 98% of its value. TheGlobe.com and Calico were effectively wiped out.
What did they have in common? Low revenues, fast growth rates and a booming, booming, booming market.
So when Cerebras opened 75% above the expected IPO price, it was tempting to file it away as another overhyped stock riding the frenzy around a new technology, itself bundled in layers of hype.
What I saw instead was a sign that the market is finally starting to grasp the demand for AI inference.
I’ve been following Cerebras since 2018, when I first spoke with Andrew Feldman, the founder. Last year, Chantal Smith and I visited their headquarters in Sunnyvale.
