Cerebras refiles for IPO but UAE ties remain

• Abu Dhabi responsible for 86% of revenue
• G42 owns 1% of US chipmaker
• 2024 IPO shelved over security review

US artificial intelligence chipmaker Cerebras Systems has revived plans for a Nasdaq listing after clearing scrutiny over its Abu Dhabi ties.

The Californian company hopes to capitalise on rising demand for AI infrastructure, supported by a string of large deals.

Cerebras shelved plans for an IPO last year following a national security review linked to its relationship with G42 – the Abu Dhabi technology group backed by sovereign wealth fund Mubadala – amid concerns over foreign access to advanced semiconductor technology.

G42 is both an investor in and customer of Cerebras, having bought about 1 percent of the chipmaker for $40 million in 2021. 

The company’s latest filing shows its customer mix has shifted but remains concentrated.

Cerebras has signed a multi-year agreement with US-based OpenAI that could exceed $20 billion, and struck a deal with Amazon Web Services to deploy its chips in cloud data centres.

While reliance on G42 has declined from earlier levels, revenue concentration has shifted to Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), a state-backed AI university.

G42 accounted for 24 percent of revenue in 2025, down from 85 percent a year earlier, while MBZUAI contributed 62 percent.

Together, the two customers made up 86 percent of total sales.

MBZUAI has collaborated with G42 on AI model development, and Cerebras supplies compute infrastructure to both.

Customer concentration is also reflected in receivables, with MBZUAI accounting for nearly 78 percent at the end of 2025, compared with 91 percent for G42 a year earlier.

The OpenAI agreement is expected to represent a substantial portion of projected revenue over the next several years. Under the deal, Cerebras must deliver computing capacity on set timelines and meet service requirements, or OpenAI can terminate part or all of the contract. The agreement is also linked to a $1 billion working capital loan to Cerebrus that could become repayable in certain circumstances.

A binding term sheet signed in March 2026 with AWS sets out pricing, exclusivity and minimum capacity commitments, though final agreements are yet to be completed. 

Cerebras reported $510 million in revenue in 2025, up nearly 76 percent from a year earlier.

Founded in 2016, the company is among a wave of AI-focused companies including Anthropic and OpenAI that are seeking to go public as demand for computing power rises alongside the adoption of generative AI, a market dominated by Nvidia which is currently valued at about $4 trillion.

• US must do better on AI chip exports, Cerebras CEO says
• Washington praises G42 safeguards for advanced AI chips
• US ‘to let UAE import millions of Nvidia’s AI chips’

Cerebras raised $1 billion in financing at a $23 billion valuation in February.

The company is positioning itself as a challenger with “wafer-scale” processors – one very large chip, rather than linking smaller chips in clusters – to train and run AI models.

CEO Andrew Feldman told Gitex Technology Week last year that Cerebras chips “work 20 times faster than Nvidia”.

“We set out to build a chip the size of a dinner plate… 56 times larger than the largest chip ever built,” he said. “If we [want] to take down the king [Nvidia], we [need] radical innovation.”

Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Barclays and UBS are leading the offering.