Cerebras IPO Winners Include Foundation, Benchmark—and OpenAI

Among the biggest winners: Foundation Capital stands to make about 76 times its investment, returning nearly $2.8 billion, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. Venture capital firm Benchmark stands to make 12 times on its investment, returning nearly $3 billion, according to a person familiar with the firm. And early backer Eclipse Capital is also in line for a fat return.

The IPO will also reward some latecomers. OpenAI, whose founders once considered merging with Cerebras, entered into a Christmas Eve deal that would award it up to 11% of the company if OpenAI buys billions of dollars of compute capacity from Cerebras in the coming years. It will only pay a fraction of a cent for each share.

OpenAI’s stake shortly after the IPO would stand at roughly $1.8 billion, based on the IPO price and the portion of its stake likely to vest.

Some investors over the last five years were also able to pick up shares at a discount. In 2024, Cerebras authorized the sale of shares for less than $15, roughly half the price of its prior round in 2021. Alpha Wave Global, which invests in both private and public stocks, snapped up at least 3 million shares then.

A year later, Cerebras raised $1.1 billion at just over $36 a share in a round led by Fidelity and Atreides Management. Then, after the company pulled its first IPO filing, Tiger Global Management led a $1 billion raise at $89 a share.

The IPO is also lucrative for Cerebras employees and its founder, CEO Andrew Feldman, whose 5.5% stake in the company is worth $1.9 billion at the IPO price.

The IPO should also add to the wealth of OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, who own roughly 89,000 shares and 77,000 shares as of late 2025, respectively, according to court filings. That means they are sitting on stakes worth $16 million and $14 million apiece.

The Information estimated the VC firms’ returns based on information from people with knowledge of the investments, the price of its private shares and securities filings. Actual returns will depend on how the stock trades and when investors decide to cash out.

Here are the details:

Eclipse Capital

Fairchild Semiconductor holds legendary status in Silicon Valley due to its role laying the foundation for modern computing more than a half-century ago. So Cerebras got an early nod of approval when former Fairchild employee Pierre Lamond decided to back Cerebras a year after its founding.

Lamond, now 95, had backed Feldman’s previous company, microserver company SeaMicro, when Lamond was investing for Khosla Ventures. AMD acquired SeaMicro in 2012. Lamond joined Eclipse in 2015 after also investing at Sequoia Capital.

Feldman “is probably one of the few that I invested in the second company that he started,” Lamond said in an interview with the Computer History Museum in 2017. Eclipse invested in four subsequent funding rounds, mostly in Cerebras’ first three years, but it also bought 9,000 shares at just under $28 each in 2021. Eclipse’s total cost for its share couldn’t be learned, but it’s likely in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

Lior Susan, founder and CEO of Eclipse, has served on Cerebras’ board since April 2023.

Value of stake at IPO price: $2.5 billion

Benchmark

Benchmark also invested in Cerebras for the first time in 2016, co-leading its Series A investment with Foundation Capital. General partner Eric Vishria, who’s served on its board since then, said he had spent more than a year looking at AI applications—then called deep learning—when a partner offered to introduce him to Feldman.

Cerebras wasn’t a typical investment for Benchmark, which is known for its early bets in Uber and Snapchat, and Vishria had misgivings heading into the meeting.

Vishria recalled on the ARK Invest podcast in 2019 that he thought, “What the hell am I doing” considering a semiconductor startup?

Still, Vishria said he was intrigued by Feldman’s idea of running AI faster and better by redesigning chips for AI—in Cerebras’ case, by making them the size of dinner plates. Excited, he talked to partner Bill Gurley, who told Vishria, “We need the old guys for this,” meaning the Benchmark founders who had invested in an earlier generation of semiconductor companies. One of them, Bruce Dunlevie, met with Cerebras and delivered his verdict: “It’s super hard to do what these guys are trying to do, but if any team can do it, they can do it.”

Benchmark has doubled down since its initial investment into Cerebras, spending $250 million for 3.2 million shares last year and this year. (Benchmark has also bought shares through special purpose vehicles, according to someone with knowledge of the firm’s investment.)

The recent purchases brought its stake to nearly 10% at the time of the IPO. That makes it more valuable than Benchmark’s stake in Snap at the time of the social media app’s 2017 IPO.

Theoretical return on $268 million investment: 12.2 times

Value of stake at IPO price: $3.3 billion

Foundation Capital

Foundation Capital general partner Steve Vassallo had met Feldman in 2009 when he was raising money for SeaMicro. Vassallo didn’t invest but kept talking to Feldman, expecting he’d want to invest in Feldman’s next idea. The early-stage investor did just that, clinching Vassallo a seat on the chipmaker’s board. But it did more: In Cerebras’ early days, employees worked out of the Foundation Capital’s office as entrepreneurs-in-residence, according to a person close to the firm.

Foundation also invested in Cerebras’ 2018 fundraise at about $16 a share, according to PitchBook. Altogether, Foundation has sunk $37 million in total into the chipmaker, according to the person.

Theoretical return on $37 million investment: 76 times

Value of stake at IPO price: $2.8 billion

Alpha Wave Global

Alpha Wave—a growth-stage firm run by investor Rick Gerson that’s backed SpaceX, OpenAI and TikTok—bought Cerebras shares in at least three later-stage funding rounds.

The firm first invested in Cerebras in 2019, at just over $18 a share. It later backed the chipmaker in a 2021 funding round that valued the company at just under $28 a share, according to PitchBook. It then spent an additional $190 million in three subsequent funding rounds, culminating in a 6.5% stake.

Value of stake at IPO price: $2.2 billion