Cerebras Stock Falls 20% to Post-IPO Low — SkimNews
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- Cerebras stock fell nearly 20% this week to $166.43, its lowest price since the company's May IPO, after research firm SemiAnalysis reported that OpenAI will use Nvidia GPUs to power "Ultrafast" mode for GPT-6.1 Sol
- Cerebras shares are now down more than half from their post-IPO pop, with the company's market cap collapsing from $95 billion on its first trading day to roughly $39 billion
- The decline was compounded by the expiration of post-IPO lockup restrictions on Wednesday, which freed up 19.4 million shares (8% of total shares outstanding), on top of 14.6 million shares unlocking every two weeks since Aug. 19
- OpenAI CEO Sam Altman pushed back on the report, posting on X that "Cerebras is a close partner, and we have a deep engagement pushing on the frontiers of speed," sending the stock up roughly 3% in extended trading Friday
- Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman and CTO Sean Lie — both minted billionaires by the IPO — sold over $240 million of Class A shares between Aug. 20 and Sept. 25 under trading plans adopted shortly after the IPO
- The company had struck a $10+ billion deal with OpenAI in January to supply 750 megawatts of computing power through 2028, but losing inference workloads to Nvidia cuts into its core pitch: McKinsey projects inference will surpass training as AI's dominant data center workload by decade's end
Why it matters: Cerebras's $95 billion debut valuation was built on being a credible Nvidia alternative for AI inference; losing OpenAI's "Ultrafast" workload to Nvidia directly undercuts that thesis. With the CEO and CTO cashing out over $240 million and 8% of outstanding shares unlocking Wednesday, the post-IPO lockup wave is amplifying the selloff exactly as the competitive narrative cracks.
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