NEW YORK: Cerebras Systems Inc, a startup that looks to challenge Nvidia Corp in artificial intelligence (AI) computing, filed for an initial public offering (IPO) on Monday and released financial information showing a fast-growing but still relatively small operation.
In a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Cerebras disclosed that its sales increased to US$136.4mil in the first six months of the year, up from US$8.7mil in the period a year earlier.
Cerebras had previously filed confidentially for the IPO in August.
The Sunnyvale, California-based firm recorded a net loss of US$66.6mil in the six-month period, compared with a net loss of US$77.8mil a year earlier, the filing showed.
It also revealed that it depends on Abu Dhabi’s Group 42 Holding Ltd (G42), an AI company, for most of its revenue.
The filing depicts a company still in the early stages of taking on Nvidia and other established chipmakers, but it looks to gain an edge with a different approach.
CS-3, Cerebras’ flagship system, is optimised to handle AI computing workloads and can be clustered together to power AI supercomputers.
Founder and chief executive officer Andrew Feldman said his firm’s chips, and the computing systems equipped with them, will upend the AI computing industry.
So far, the 10s of billions of dollars poured into running AI models and generating responses have mostly flowed to Nvidia’s graphics processing units.
Cerebras and the selling shareholders won’t disclose proposed terms for the share sale, including the company’s valuation in a listing, until a later filing.
A listing could raise as much as US$1bil at a US$7bil to US$8bil value, Bloomberg News has reported.
The Silicon Valley company’s listing plan is one of the most watched tech offerings this year because of the AI connection – a theme that resonates with investors – but it’s also a market that’s increasingly competitive. — Bloomberg
