That is at times the setting, we tend to ignore it, we laugh, we giggle, and sometimes we cry. If it is your own body, you will likely panic. So as I saw Tom’s Hardware (at https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/cerebras-files-for-ipo-company-remains-unprofitable-despite-20x-revenue-growth) give us ‘Cerebras files for IPO — company remains unprofitable despite 20x revenue growth’ I tend to frown. There are settings with little profit (like the Big Mac for $1.95) which at 20 times still becomes a decent amount (all $6 of them), we get that other factors that remove profit margins, but when the setting becomes “Bleeding money at a rapid rate” it becomes a worry. You see, the business plan makes sense or is a hail Mary (not unlike the Macintosh Performa) this is an intentional setting I am giving, because that Hail Mary became the PowerMac and then the G4 and G5. These were the systems that put Apple on several maps and from there the big wins became visible. A Hail Mary that worked. But here we are given “Cerebras, the supplier of wafer-scale AI processors, has filed for an IPO for the second time after it cancelled such plans due to its ties with G42, an Abu Dhabi-based AI company backed by sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, last year. Financial results disclosed as part of the filing reveal that Cerebras appears to be one of the fastest-growing AI hardware companies right now. However, 86% of its revenue comes from two customers, and the company is bleeding money.” From this limited information I would gather that the business plan is highly likely flawed. And we are given that the 86% comes from just two customers (G42 and Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, MBZUAI). Now I would go with the Business plan, but there might be reasons for this and the settings that AI processors give could still be a solution if these two clients put in the considerable work (no critique on the two trendsetters). As we see that “The remaining 14% of revenue is generated by a fragmented base of smaller enterprise, government, and cloud customers, but none contribute enough individually to reduce Cerebras’ heavy reliance on its top two clients. More recently, Cerebras inked agreements to supply its AI hardware to Amazon Web Services and OpenAI, which will diversify revenue streams for the company.” But the larger option is gaining traction. Now for the most we can ignore the fact that they are American (which is at present never a good selling point), but they are also in Toronto and Bangalore. The issue is that they are no threat to Nvidia and they don’t need to be, the idea is that they could skim the market and take up traction pretty much anywhere. I reckon that they have done that, but there is the option that they could optionally feed data centers in China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, if that works and they could get the first one in these places, they are likely to gain several other corporations and locations for implementation. The reasoning I have is that there are several sounds from customers that they have a lack of processors, so are they tapped? It seems so as we see “Cerebras has a massive $24.6 billion backlog (including the $20 billion OpenAI deal), which provides strong demand visibility. The company expects to recognize approximately 15% of this revenue within the first 24 months through December 31, 2027, 43% during months 25 to 48, and the remainder thereafter. Still, Cerebras warns that converting this backlog into revenue depends on the manufacturing capacity of its partners, infrastructure deployment, and power availability.” It makes me wonder why the quote “Bleeding money at a rapid rate” was given. So as we see “Cerebras recorded a $363 million gain from a change in the fair value (and extinguishment) of a forward contract liability: the company had a financial obligation whose value was reduced, which allows it to book that reduction as income. If the value was not reduced, the company would be unprofitable. In fact, Cerebras’ operating losses totaled $145.9 million in 2025.” But even so, as I see it (with my lack of economy studies) thematic doesn’t seem to add up and my mind goes back to the business plan. It is my simplistic mind that goes with the setting that Cerebras either has a product that works or they have not. If they do, the client has to pay and there are no freebees in this market, you do that if the product is shoddy, and the salesperson either deals with the buyer correctly, or they don’t. It is my rather simplistic setting of customer service, “we have a product and we would love to have you as customer, yet, our product is not free”, it will rock your world (for a price) and within that setting (and the right business plan) Cerebras should do just fine. As such I don’t get the setting we see. So as we are also given “Cerebras postponed its IPO plans in 2024 after a national security review examined its ties with Abu Dhabi-based G42 amid concerns about potential foreign access to advanced AI processors. G42 is both a customer and investor of Cerebras, which controls a 1% stake in the company that it acquired for $40 million in 2021.” This is an issue as it involves 50% of their customer base and what is this “potential foreign access to advanced AI processors”? Is this another American setting (not unlike their stance towards Huawei)? You see China is sized at 1.413 billion, as such it is over 4 times the size of the USA, the United States can either play nice or go down with the ship they are sinking themselves. Cerebras could go towards the EU as well as India and partially fund the data centers there and get longer lasting revenue, but that is almost the only options that are there. This market is getting saturated and it is not a market that has time and options for prima donna’s, this is my simplistic view. So as the article ends with “Cerebras has not specified an official fundraising target in its IPO filing, but current market expectations point to a roughly $3 billion raise. This is significantly higher than earlier $1 billion plans, which reflect the company’s rapid revenue growth and the scale of its AI infrastructure ambitions.” It also signals that the ‘bleeding effect’ is a temporary setting, depending on how the IPO evolves. Yet as I see it, the IPO has a lot less chance of being successful as long as the “Bleeding money at a rapid rate” vision is in place. But as I see it, enlarging their customer base precedes the need for an IPO, because no I matter how good the IPO is, it is facing slaughter when the customer base is set to two. But as I stated, my lack of economy might be the ruling red herring here.
And whilst I leave you with this article and a few hidden hints, I will go and look what happens to Cerebras before June, May it have a nice time.
Have an interesting day today (‘great’ is oversold too much, even by me).
Lawrence van Rijn - Law Lord to be 