Cerebras CEO says AI chip demand is ‘not speculative’ as shares double in blockbuster IPO debut

Cerebras Systems Inc. shares surged more than 100% above their IPO price when trading opened Thursday, in a blockbuster debut that underscored investors’ intense appetite for AI infrastructure companies.

The company priced its initial public offering at $185 a share Wednesday night—above an already elevated expected range—raising roughly $5.55 billion. The AI chipmaker sold 30 million shares, with underwriters holding an option to purchase an additional 4.5 million shares, according to the company.

Founded in 2016, the company is a San Francisco-based chipmaker that designs processors specifically for AI workloads. Its flagship product, the Wafer Scale Engine 3, is built on a single silicon wafer rather than the smaller chips stitched together in Nvidia’s GPUs—a design the company says delivers speed and cost advantages for AI inference. It’s a competitor for both Nvidia and AMD. 

Cerebras is being........

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