Cerebras Systems - $CBRS
Sam Altman called this company a "senior partner"...
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In brief, Cerebras Systems provides supercomputing solutions, cloud services, and artificial intelligence systems to giant companies, data centers, and research institutions.
The company's stock - $CBRS is reaching an interesting area on the chart - and analysts continue to give high price targets - so we dove deep:
OpenAI committed to purchasing 750MW of inference capacity from Cerebras as part of a multi-year agreement signed in December 2025.
The deal also includes a working capital loan of approximately $1 billion from OpenAI to Cerebras to help establish the infrastructure.
Reviewing the documents reveals even more interesting details:
OpenAI received an option from Cerebras to purchase an additional 1.25GW of capacity until 2030,
Meaning, if the option is exercised, this represents a potential of 2GW of inference capacity for OpenAI
But there's something much more interesting here
Sam Altman has a personal interest in this company succeeding...
Sam Altman is not only a Cerebras customer - he is also an investor in the company.
In fact, Cerebras officially lists him among its investors.
According to Cerebras, Altman himself participated in the IPO roadshow - and the connection between the companies is deeper than a client-supplier deal.
And he's not the only one
A quick look at the list of private investors in the company reveals figures who might have conflicting interests - yet still invested in the company!
Among them:
Intel CEO
Intel's Chief Product Officer
AMD's Chief Technology Officer
Facebook CEO
When you think about it, it's strange -
Some of these investors are executives at companies that supposedly compete with Cerebras - yet they are buying shares of their competitor?
Or do they know something we don't...?
The numbers illustrate how much Cerebras has changed in recent years:
2022: Revenue of approximately $24.6 million
2023: Revenue of approximately $78.7 million
2024: Revenue of approximately $236 million
2025: Revenue of approximately $510 million - growth of about 76% compared to 2024
In 2025, the company moved to a net income of approximately $238 million - compared to a loss of about $482 million in 2024.
In 2026, growth continues:
In the first half of 2026, Cerebras reported revenue of $373.5 million - an increase of 84% compared to the first half of 2025.
In the second quarter of 2026, the company reported:
Revenue: $180.1 million - a 74% increase compared to the same quarter.
Core revenue: $209.9 million - a 103% increase.
Cloud and services revenue: $126.0 million - a jump of 281%.
Core cloud and services revenue: $127.7 million - a jump of 287%.
On the other hand, hardware revenue grew by only 17%.
This is perhaps the most important data point in the entire story.
Hardware continues to grow - but at a much more moderate pace, while cloud and services businesses are surging at a triple-digit rate.
This means a change in the business structure: instead of selling a chip or system to a customer and receiving revenue at the time of sale - Cerebras can earn long-term revenue every time customers consume its computing power.
If this trend continues - the company's revenue potential could be greater than hardware sales alone.
And pay attention to the following data point:
Future revenue backlog from contracts: approximately $25.4 billion at the end of the second quarter.
For comparison - Cerebras' revenue in 2025 was approximately $510 million.
Meaning, the RPO is approximately 50 times the annual revenue of 2025.
The forecast for 2026 is also very strong
Expected core revenue: $880-890 million.
This represents growth of about 73% compared to 2025.
And here we come to an important question:
What happens in 2027?
Here, in our estimation, lies the most important point...
Cerebras management expects 2027 revenue to be more than three times that of 2026.
If the company ends 2026 around the midpoint of the forecast - approximately $885 million in core revenue - then a threefold rate presents a potential of more than $2.6 billion in revenue in 2027.
And this completely changes the company's scale!
The company also plans to increase its production capacity by more than tenfold during 2026.
The big question still lingering here is whether Cerebras can become a significant layer within the global AI infrastructure?
If the answer proves positive - then 2026 may turn out to be the transition year - the year in which the company begins to shift from hardware sales to a computing-as-a-service model...
And could 2027 be the year this transition turns into billions of dollars in revenue?
We are following this closely.