Cerebras's stock rockets out of the gate, in a sign the AI boom is as strong as ever

MW Cerebras's stock rockets out of the gate, in a sign the AI boom is as strong as ever

By Britney Nguyen

The chip maker's shares opened 89% above the IPO price, then was briefly halted for volatility before rallying further

Cerebras will start trading on the Nasdaq on Thursday.

Shares of Cerebras Systems rocketed out of the gate Thursday, as demand for the inference-chip maker's stock far exceeded already sky-high expectations.

The stock's $(CBRS)$ first trade on the Nasdaq was at $350, or 89.2% above where the initial public offering was priced, at 12:59 p.m. Eastern for 4.4 million shares, according to FactSet data.

As investors clamored to buy in, the ensuing volatility triggered a brief trading halt within seconds of the first trade. The rally extended after the halt was lifted, with the stock up 100% in recent afternoon trading at $370.

At that price, Cerebras's market capitalization was $79.6 billion. On Wednesday before the IPO price, the market cap was expected to be as high as $34.4 billion.

"The pricing action at least indicates investors are very excited about its prospects, and the potential for Cerebras to become a key player in chip development," Matt Kennedy, senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, told MarketWatch in emailed comments.

Cerebras is going directly after Nvidia (NVDA), Kennedy said, "with a product that excels at inference, an emerging frontier in AI competitive superiority." And though it's still "a long way off," some investors are betting that it could potentially take on the AI-chip giant in the future, he added.

The IPO priced at $185 late Wednesday, topping its previously announced expected range of $150 to $160, which had already been raised from $115 to $125. Cerebras had also raised its offering to 30 million shares from 28 million.

The company's chips are built to support inference, or the process of running artificial-intelligence models after training, which is increasingly a major focus for companies deploying applications.

Cerebras makes macro chips, which it said are 58 times larger than Nvidia's B200 chips. CEO Andrew Feldman boasted in an interview on CNBC that, in the 70 years of the compute industry, Cerebras was the only company to succeed at building a big chip.

"Since we did it, others have tried and also failed," Feldman said. "So we're really confident that the technical moat is wide and deep."

Investors have been hot for AI-infrastructure plays such as chips and networking as hyperscalers and other AI companies plan to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into building out AI data-centers.

-Britney Nguyen

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May 14, 2026 13:15 ET (17:15 GMT)

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