Brain systems it didn’t just go public this week; it raised billionaires and delivered one of the biggest venture payouts in years. The start of the AI chip took its IPO to $185 a share on Wednesday (May 13), above a range it had already raised twice. Shares opened at $350 on Thursday and closed at $311.07, valuing the company at about $95 billion. The $5.55 billion offering is the largest US tech IPO since then Uber in 2019 and the biggest semiconductor debut on record, serving as an early test of investor appetite for a wave of AI listings, including OpenAI AND Anthropogenic later this year.
Momentum cooled slightly today, with shares down about 5 percent intraday to around $293. However, the IPO immediately created two billionaires and generated massive returns for a small circle of early backers.
CEO, Andrew Feldman56, co-founded Cerebras in 2016 with four former colleagues from SeaMicroa server company he founded and sold AMD for 334 million dollars. Feldman owns roughly 5.5 percent of Cerebras, one stock now worth about 3.2 billion dollars, according to Bloomberg. Co-founder and CTO Sean Lee holds a stake worth about $1.6 billion.
Feldman is a serial entrepreneur with deep roots in Silicon Valley. He grew up on the Stanford campus, where both his parents were professors, and later earned a BA and an MBA from the university. Over the past two decades, he helped take Riverstone Networks public and led marketing at Force10 Networks prior to its $800 million sale to vein. Cerebras is his fourth company in semiconductors and data infrastructure and by far his biggest win.
Earlier this year, the company’s board approved what it described as a “moonshot” compensation package for Feldman, awarding additional stock tied to market capitalization milestones. The timing underscores the rapid ascent of Cerebra: the company reported $510 million in revenue for 2025, up 76 percent year-over-year, and rose to $238 million in net income after a loss of $481 million in 2024.
The biggest winners from the IPO also include the venture firms that backed Cerebras from the start.
standard, Establishment capitalAND Eclipse Ventures co-led the company’s $27 million Series A in 2016. At Benchmark, Eric Vishria led the deal and remains on board. The firm’s 8.1 percent stake was worth about $6 billion at Thursday’s close. Benchmark’s belief in the company remained strong even late in the game. In February, it raised two new funds, both called Benchmark Infrastructure, to invest another $225 million in Cerebras ahead of the IPO.
The capital of the Foundation, where Steve Vassallo led the investment and hosted Feldman in its offices during the company’s earliest days, now holds a stake worth about $5.3 billion.
Eclipse Ventures, led by the founder Lior Susanstands at about 5.2 billion dollars.
Later investors also saw significant gains. faithfulnesswhich led a $1.1 billion Series G round in September 2025 along with Atreides Management, remains the largest shareholder with 11.3 percent. This stock is worth about $3.8 billion at the IPO price. Tiger Global followed with a $1 billion Series H in February at a $23 billion valuation.
A group of high-profile angel investors will also benefit, including Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya SutskeverAdam D’Angelo, Andy Bechtolsheim AND Intel CEO, Lip-Bu Tan. Most of their holdings are too small to require full SEC disclosure, but some did appear as part of it. Musk c. The Altman lawsuit.
Filings in that case show Altman held roughly 89,000 shares as of Dec. 31, now worth about $27.8 million at post-IPO prices near $311. Brockman held about 78,000 shares, worth about $24.2 million.
The same filings reveal that OpenAI once explored acquiring Cerebra. In 2017, Brockman wrote that “exclusive access to the Cerebras hardware would give OpenAI an overwhelming hardware advantage over Google.
This relationship evolved years later into a major business partnership. In January, OpenAI signed a multi-year computing agreement with Cerebras worth more than $20 billion for 750 megawatts of capacity through 2028. A separate $1 billion loan from OpenAI in December 2025 came with guarantees for more than 33 million shares, enough for roughly a 10 percent stake. The additional warrants could be worth about $5 billion at the midpoint of the IPO, according to Financial Times estimates.
Cerebra’s successful debut lands as IPO market reawakens. US IPO proceeds have more than doubled from year to day in 2026, with Cerebras accounting for roughly a quarter of that total. Companies like SpaceXOpenAI and Anthropic are expected to follow, with SpaceX and OpenAI only anticipated to raise up to 135 billion dollars together.
