Founded in 2015 and based in San Francisco, California, Cerebras aims to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) and change the future of AI work. Cerebras has developed a new class of AI computer systems and released one of the largest and fastest AI semiconductor chips in March 2024. Let’s dive into Cerebras’ history and milestones to review what might make this company stand out from other semiconductor companies. We’ll also review factors such as Cerebras revenue, funding rounds, and the potential for an IPO.
Cerebras’ History
Cerebras’ five co-founders, Andrew Feldman, Gary Lauterbach, Michael James, Sean Lie, and Jean-Philippe Fricker, worked together at SeaMicro, an ultra-dense computer server company, which was founded by Feldman and Lauterbach. After SeaMicro was sold to AMD in 2012, the five stayed for a while but decided to start something new.
Why?
In an interview with ServeTheHome from 2020, Feldman revealed that the idea for Cerebras came from asking “why?” In essence, Lauterbach had asked, “why would a 25-year-old processor built and tuned to push pixels to a computer monitor be good at deep learning?” In 2015, computers and hardware weren’t being built to support advanced AI models, facilitate machine learning, and process the massive amounts of data required to train large language models.
From there, the founders explored what can be done to solve the lack of memory and required large time commitments to intentionally create computing chips designed for AI. Cerebras was born in 2015 with the goal to change the future of AI.
Stealth Mode
The company maintained a low profile for the first 4 years of operations, building quietly behind the scenes. Finally in 2019, Cerebras unveiled the industry’s first trillion transistor chip – the culmination of research and years of work. The Wafer Scale Engine (WSE) was one of the largest computer chips ever built – featuring the largest memory bandwidth and highest speed, optimized for AI work. Cerebras went on to unveil additional supercomputers like Andromeda in 2022 and released its largest iteration of the WSE yet, the WSE-3 in March 2024.
The Vision
“We are engineers who are not afraid. We like doing work that other people shy away from because it’s either too hard or they’re afraid or they can’t raise the capital to do it…[we] set out to do something profound and transformative. We wanted that when they told the history of the first 50 years of the 21st century of compute that there was a chapter on us. These guys did things that other people tried and failed; they made it work.” – Andrew Feldman
Cerebras Milestones
Cerebras has achieved numerous milestones within the past few years. Some of the recent major highlights for Cerebras include:
- Confidentially filed for an IPO in August 2024 that could come in 2024, with Citigroup and Barclays assisting as underwriters.
- Unveiled the Wafer Scale Engine 3 (WSE-3) in March 2024, which the company reports to be the fastest AI chip on Earth.
- Signed a multi-million-dollar agreement with the Mayo Clinic in January 2024 to develop AI models for the healthcare industry.
- Forbes reported in December 2023 that Cerebras’ revenue and customer commitments were approaching $1 billion.
Cerebras Funding Rounds
Cerebras has raised $715 million over six funding rounds. The following is a breakdown of the larger named funding rounds.
Series A/ Series B
In May 2016, Cerebras raised $27 million from Foundation Capital and Eclipse Ventures. And just seven months later, Cerebras raised another $25 million from Benchmark Capital. Cerebras was operating in stealth mode and not even TechCrunch could find much info about the company at the time of the raise beyond, “What we’ve heard from sources is that the company is working on a specialized next-generation chip (possibly a GPU) for deep-learning applications.”
Series C/Series D
And then in 2017, only six months after its Series B, Cerebras raised another $60 million from Sequoia, Scale-Up, Foundation Capital, Eclipse Ventures, Benchmark Capital, and Altimeter Capital. Only a bit more information had come out about the company but public interest was really being piqued with Forbes touting the near $1 billion valuation in a September article.
Still in stealth, Cerebras did not speak publicly for over a year before raising $80 million in Series D capital in November 2018. New investors in the round included Coatue and Vy Capital with participation from existing investors Benchmark, Altimeter, and Foundation.
Emerging from Stealth
Between its Series D and Series E rounds, Cerebras finally unveiled what it had been working on the past 4 years: the Wafer Scale Engine (WSE). One of the world’s largest computer chips ever built, the WSE reportedly has the highest speed and largest memory to process large amounts of data quicker than other chips on the market.
Series E/Series F/IPO?
Cerebras raised $272 million in Series E funding in late 2019 before raising an additional $250 million in Series F funding in November 2021 at an over $4 billion valuation. Aiming to redefine what it means to work with AI, Cerebras is now pursuing an IPO as of August 2024.
Cerebras Awards
The following are some notable awards that Cerebras has received in the recent past:
- Ranked on the Forbes AI 50 for 2024
- Named to the TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2024
- Placed third on CRN’s 10 Hottest Semiconductor Startups of 2024
Final Thoughts
Operating in stealth for a majority of the company’s history, Cerebras has taken steps to answer questions that seemed difficult. Constantly reporting industry firsts such as “world’s largest” and “world’s fastest”, Cerebras appears to be well poised to disrupt the AI industry. Taking on larger funding rounds due to the high research costs associated with disrupting computing systems, it could be interesting to see what opportunities Cerebras creates in the industry.
Want to learn more about other MicroVentures portfolio companies disrupting their industries? Check out the following blogs to learn more:
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