AI Inference Chip Company Cerebras Raises $1.1 Bn at $8.1 Bn Valuation

AI inference chip company Cerebras Systems has raised $1.1 billion in an oversubscribed Series G funding round, valuing the company at $8.1 billion post-money. The round was led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Atreides Management, with participation from Tiger Global, Valor Equity Partners, and 1789 Capital. 

Existing backers Altimeter, Alpha Wave, and Benchmark also took part. Citigroup and Barclays Capital acted as joint placement agents.

The company said it will use the funds to expand its technology portfolio in AI processor design, system design, and AI supercomputers. Cerebras also plans to increase U.S. manufacturing and data centre capacity to meet growing demand.

“From our inception, we have been backed by the most knowledgeable investors in the industry. They have seen the historic opportunity that is AI and have chosen to invest in Cerebras,” said Andrew Feldman, co-founder and CEO of Cerebras Systems.

Cerebras, which launched its inference service in late 2024, claims its systems outperform NVIDIA GPUs by more than an order of magnitude on open-source models, according to third-party benchmarking firm Artificial Analysis.

“Since our founding, we have tested every AI inference provider across hundreds of models. Cerebras is consistently the fastest,” said Micah Hill-Smith, CEO of Artificial Analysis.

The company said its performance advantage has led to adoption by enterprises, governments, and developers. Current users include AWS, Meta, IBM, Mistral, Cognition, AlphaSense, Notion, GlaxoSmithKline, Mayo Clinic, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of Defense. On Hugging Face, Cerebras is one of the top inference providers, handling over 5 million monthly requests.