Andrew Feldman, co-founder and chief executive officer of Cerebras Systems Inc., holds a Wafer Scale Engine 3 AI chip during the company’s initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq Marketsite, Thursday, May 14, 2026, in New York, USA.
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The tech billionaire club has two new members Cerebras The blockbuster IPO lifted the chipmaker’s market cap to nearly $100 billion.
Nearly a decade after Cerebras was founded, CEO Andrew Feldman and head of technology Sean Lie own shares worth $3.2 billion and $1.7 billion, respectively.
Cerebras shares soared 68% on Thursday’s Nasdaq debut, capping a remarkable rally for the company, which withdrew its previous IPO application seven months ago and instead opted to raise private capital. In February, Cerebras was valued at $23.1 billion by investors, and now the company is riding a wave of new demand for its AI chips, driving its stock price higher. intel, advanced micro device and micron Rapidly rising.
Feldman told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that the company has reached a level of maturity where “it makes sense to access the public markets.”
“We have tremendous opportunity for growth and this was the right way to fund our growth,” Feldman said after the company raised $5.55 billion in the year’s largest IPO.
Cerebras 5-day stock price chart.
The first-day pop means big profits for Cerebras’ early investors and a much-needed win for Silicon Valley venture capitalists during a long IPO drought.
Benchmark, which co-led Cerebras’ Series A funding round in 2016, held $5.5 billion worth of shares as of Thursday’s close. Foundation Capital, the other major investor in the round, has a stake worth $4.8 billion.
Total venture-backed exits in the U.S. more than doubled from last year to $217.1 billion, according to the National Venture Capital Association’s annual yearbook, but that number is less than one-third of the 2021 peak of $790.7 billion in exits.
“This is a huge accomplishment,” said Eric Vishlier, a benchmark partner who led the firm’s investment in Cerebras and remains a board member. “Whether it’s $100 billion or $50 billion or whatever, if you’re an early-stage venture investor, it’s very rare for a company to go public. It’s very rare for a company to go public at any valuation.”
Prior to Cerebras, Feldman was co-founder and CEO of SeaMicro, a microserver manufacturer. AMD It was acquired in 2012 for approximately $334 million. Mr. Feldman’s approximately 10.3 million shares of Cerebras account for about 5.5% of the company, while Mr. Lee holds nearly 3%.
Cerebras’ IPO was, by all accounts, massive. But that’s not the case compared to the likes of SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, all of which are valued at or near trillions of dollars in the private market. All companies are benefiting from the AI boom and the surge in demand for AI models and services, and the systems that support them.
OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman have made significant profits even before the company went public. They were among a group of early investors in Cerebras. intel CEO Lip Vu Tan. Altman’s stock is now worth $27.8 million, and Brockman’s stock is worth $24.2 million.
OpenAI has strengthened its ties with Cerebras, signing a $20 billion multi-year deal for computing power and related services in early 2026. While Cerebras sells infrastructure for many layers of the AI stack, including data centers, proprietary chips, and cloud platforms, the chipmaker’s specialty is inference, where models respond to and interact directly with users.
The company says its Wafer Scale Engine 3 chip is Nvidia’s GPU.
“This has been a long and very interesting journey, with a lot of technology and innovation and a lot of head-turning moments,” said Steve Vassallo, partner at Foundation Capital and director of Cerebras. “Today is an example of that.”
—CNBC’s Jordan Novet contributed to this report.
Spotlight: Cerebras Ends First Day of Trading Nearly 70% Above IPO Price
