Cerebras Is About as Big as Nvidia’s Data Center Business Was Nearly a Decade Ago. The Similarities Mostly End There. | The Motley Fool

Cerebras Systems (CBRS -2.23%) priced its initial public offering (IPO) at $185 a share in May, and the stock closed its first day of trading at $311.07. As I write, shares are roughly $165 — below the IPO price, about 47% under that first close, and near the stock’s lowest close since it went public.

The business, meanwhile, keeps growing. The artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaker expects $880 million to $890 million of core revenue for 2026, up about 74% over last year at the midpoint. Core revenue is the company’s preferred non-GAAP (adjusted) sales number.

Any fast-growing AI chipmaker invites a comparison to Nvidia (NVDA -0.52%). And on revenue alone, Cerebras today is about where Nvidia‘s data center business was nearly a decade ago.

Nvidia had a profitable business to rely on

In fiscal 2017 (the year ended Jan. 29, 2017), Nvidia’s data center business took in $830 million of revenue, almost two and a half times the $339 million it posted in fiscal 2016. That’s around what Cerebras expects to pull in this year.

In fiscal 2026, that business posted $193.7 billion, a 68% rise from the year before and more than 200 times its fiscal 2017 revenue.

But data center was a side business for Nvidia back then. Gaming took in $4.06 billion of the company’s $6.91 billion in fiscal 2017 revenue, almost five times the data center number. Nvidia was also solidly profitable, with net income climbing 171% that year to $1.67 billion.

Today’s Change

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