By Echo Wang, Manya Saini and Pritam Biswas<\/p>\n
May 4 (Reuters) – Nvidia-rival Cerebras is seeking a valuation of as much as $26.62 billion in its U.S. initial public offering, as heavy spending on \u200cAI infrastructure lifts demand for advanced chips and fuels investor appetite for the sector.<\/p>\n
Sunnyvale, California-based Cerebras \u200cis aiming to sell 28 million shares in the offering, priced between $115 and $125 apiece to raise $3.50 billion in the company’s second attempt \u200bto go public after withdrawing a previous IPO filing last October.<\/p>\n
The company is known for its wafer-scale engine chips, designed to speed up the training and inference of large AI models, placing it in direct competition with Nvidia<\/a> and other AI hardware firms.<\/p>\n The surge in AI adoption has set off a sharp rise in demand for the high-performance \u200cchips needed to train and run \u2060complex models, turning semiconductors into a key bottleneck in the technology supply chain.<\/p>\n As companies race to build out AI infrastructure such as data centers and cloud services, chipmakers have \u2060emerged as some of the biggest beneficiaries, with Nvidia leading the pack.<\/p>\n “By bringing massive compute and memory onto a single piece of silicon and integrating it into a purpose-built system and software stack, we deliver exceptional AI speed for \u200bcustomers on \u200bpremises and via the cloud,” Cerebras said.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, \u200bCerebras raised $1 billion in a late-stage funding round, \u200cled by tech-investing giant Tiger Global, that valued it at $23 billion. Other high-profile backers of the round included Benchmark, Fidelity Management Altimeter, AMD, and Coatue.<\/p>\n