By Daniel Howley
Publication Date: 2026-05-14 15:57:00
AI chip company Cerebras (CBRS) will begin trading on the public market Thursday, the first of what is expected to be a handful of major AI-based initial public offerings in 2026.
Cerebras is going up against the biggest players in the AI chip industry, including Nvidia (NVDA) and AMD (AMD), as it works to steal away market share in the AI training and inference space.
But Cerebras doesn’t produce the same types of chips as its larger rivals. In fact, it doesn’t make chips like any other company.
The biggest difference between Cerebras’ offerings is their size. When you think of a computer processor, you likely think of something about the size of a postage stamp. Some are slightly larger, some a tad smaller, but that’s about the ballpark.
Cerebras went in a completely different direction, building what it says is the largest commercial chip ever produced. Go grab your iPad. It’s about that big.
Called the WSE, or wafer-sized engine, Cerebras builds individual chips on whole semiconductor wafers. GPUs from Nvidia and AMD, and CPUs from Intel, use individual chips cut from larger wafers.
Think of it like a pizza. Traditional chipmakers take a small slice at a time for their chips. If they want…