By Prakhar Srivastava
(Reuters) -AI chip startup Cerebras Systems, which competes with industry leader Nvidia in the booming AI chip market, on Friday filed to withdraw its plans for an initial public offering in the United States, effective immediately.
Its withdrawal comes as U.S. IPO activity picks up in recent months, reversing an earlier slowdown caused by trade-policy uncertainty, with recent listings drawing strong investor demand.
Cerebras on Tuesday said it raised $1.1 billion in a funding
round led by Fidelity Management & Research and Atreides Management, valuing the company at $8.1 billion.
"Given that Cerebras just very recently completed a sizeable fund raise, it is of no surprise that they are holding off to pursue the IPO at this time," said Josef Schuster, CEO of IPO research firm IPOX.
Last year, Cerebras filed for an initial public offering on the Nasdaq. The company’s highly anticipated listing was delayed by a U.S. national security review of a $335 million investment by G42, an Abu Dhabi-based cloud computing and AI company.
"We believe this is more a company-specific strategic decision and does not tell us anything about the state of U.S. IPO sentiment, which we view as exceptionally strong," Schuster added.
Sunnyvale, California-based Cerebras Systems makes high-performance AI chips and systems designed to speed up training and running large AI models, offering faster and cheaper alternatives to traditional GPUs.
(Reporting by Prakhar Srivastava in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)
