Cerebras Systems, a prominent player in the artificial intelligence (AI) hardware industry, has successfully raised $1.1 billion in its latest funding round. Founded in 2015, the company focuses on designing chips, hardware systems, and cloud services specifically optimized for AI workloads. This funding is a major milestone in Cerebras’ remarkable growth and financial trajectory. Including this round, the company has raised almost $2 billion over the last ten years.
This latest round of financing follows a very successful $250 million Series F round in 2021. That round, led by Alpha Wave Ventures, gave Cerebras a valuation of more than $4 billion. Cerebras is not discouraged by the challenging regulatory gauntlet which has pushed its IPO filing from September 30, 2024. The company continues to be fully committed to its growth strategies. The company faced regulatory challenges immediately after filing its IPO paperwork. It’s still focused on making a public listing one of its most important strategic objectives.
In August 2024, Cerebras introduced its inference cloud, which has rapidly exceeded demand. Andrew Feldman, co-founder and CEO of Cerebras, said he had never seen anything like the wave of interest in AI technologies. He stated, “By [the second quarter] of 2024, we came to believe that [we] had crossed a tipping point in which the AI that had been made was becoming useful, and that means you would see an explosion of demand for inference.”
And to keep up with the demand, Cerebras is opening five new data centers across the world in 2025. These centers are intentionally placed throughout Dallas, OKC, and Santa Clara, CA. These new facilities will significantly increase the company’s capacity to provide its AI inference as a service in a more energy efficient manner. Beyond WaterGEMS, Cerebras is already hard at work building out its data center footprint. Future places are to include Montreal and various provinces in Europe.
Cerebras intends on using the new funding to bolster its four U.S. based manufacturing hubs. They have a goal to accelerate the expansion of their data centers. The sole focus of the company’s growth is their AI inference services. Whether for businesses moving toward greater automation or researchers striving to improve AI models and tools, these services have grown ever more vital.
Feldman emphasized the company’s approach to securing investors for this funding round: “We chose a small number of leaders who would help us, not just in this round, but in the future.” This strategic decision is indicative of Cerebras’ intent of deepening long-term partnerships with high-value strategic stakeholders that share and support the vision with a long-term mindset.
