Cerebras Systems Inc. (CBRS.US) is planning to collaborate with various suppliers of AI data center components, paving the way for more partnerships modeled after its recent agreement with Amazon (AMZN.US).
The AI chipmaker is actively engaging with "everyone except Nvidia (NVDA.US)" to advance its business, as revealed by its CEO, Andrew Feldman, at a conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Feldman stated that the company is working with all members of the community, utilizing "other people's parts" to solve some problems and "its own solutions" for others, but he clarified that Nvidia is the sole exception to this collaborative approach.
The partnership with Amazon will enable Cerebras products to operate alongside Amazon's custom chips within AWS data centers.
Coupled with a prior supply agreement with OpenAI, these significant deals have propelled the former startup to the forefront of the artificial intelligence hardware competition, allowing it to capitalize on the current surge in AI hardware spending.
Both of these major partnerships were secured during what Feldman described as a "remarkably productive 90-day sprint" leading up to the company's initial public offering.
Last month, the Sunnyvale-based company went public, raising $5.5 billion in the largest IPO of the year to date, with its stock price soaring on its first trading day.
A key aspect of Cerebras is its unique processor design; its flagship "wafer-scale processor" is exceptionally large, capable of directly storing and processing massive datasets without relying on other components to supply data.
The company claims that computers built on its chips perform faster on inference tasks.
However, this uniqueness presents a challenge, as the chips are not compatible with standard computer hardware.
To address this, Cerebras not only develops its own complete computer systems but also establishes data center networks, offering "AI compute as a service" externally.
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