AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems has raised $1 billion in fresh funding at a valuation of $23 billion, marking a nearly threefold increase from its $8.1 billion valuation just six months prior. The round was led by Tiger Global, but a significant portion of the capital came from Benchmark Capital, one of Cerebras’ earliest investors. According to a person familiar with the deal, Benchmark committed at least $225 million to the funding round through two newly created vehicles, both named “Benchmark Infrastructure.” These funds were established specifically to support the investment, as Benchmark typically keeps its individual funds under $450 million. Benchmark first backed Cerebras in 2016 with a $27 million Series A, making it a foundational investor in the 10-year-old company. The firm’s continued confidence underscores Cerebras’ growing importance in the AI infrastructure landscape. What sets Cerebras apart is its revolutionary chip design: the Wafer Scale Engine. Announced in 2024, this processor measures about 8.5 inches on each side and is built from nearly an entire 300-millimeter silicon wafer—unlike traditional chips, which are cut into small fragments from the same wafers. The result is a single chip with 4 trillion transistors and 900,000 specialized processing cores operating in parallel. This architecture eliminates the need to shuffle data between multiple chips, a major performance bottleneck in conventional GPU clusters. Cerebras claims its system can run AI inference tasks more than 20 times faster than competing solutions. The company’s technology is now gaining traction in high-stakes AI deployments. In January, Cerebras secured a multi-year agreement with OpenAI worth over $10 billion to deliver 750 megawatts of computing power through 2028. The partnership aims to improve response times for complex AI queries. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is also a personal investor in Cerebras. Despite its technological edge, Cerebras’ path to an IPO has faced hurdles. In early 2024, the company’s reliance on G42, a UAE-based AI firm that accounted for 87% of its revenue, triggered a national security review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. Concerns over G42’s historical ties to Chinese technology companies delayed the company’s initial public offering, prompting Cerebras to withdraw its filing in early 2025. However, by late 2024, G42 had been removed from Cerebras’ investor list, paving the way for a renewed IPO effort. According to Reuters, Cerebras is now preparing for a public debut in the second quarter of 2026. The latest funding round strengthens the company’s position as a key player in the race to build next-generation AI hardware.