Cerebras Systems shares climbed 6.3% in premarket trading Monday after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called the AI chipmaker a "close partner," partially reversing a 20% plunge triggered by OpenAI's decision to use Nvidia GPUs for its latest AI model.
Cerebras Systems shares rebounded sharply in premarket trading Monday, rising 6.3% to $177 per share, after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman publicly affirmed the AI chipmaker's role as a partner — partially reversing a steep sell-off triggered last week by news that OpenAI had chosen Nvidia's GPUs over Cerebras' chips for a flagship product.
The rebound follows a 20% drop in Cerebras stock last week — its lowest price since its May initial public offering — after OpenAI announced it would power the "Ultrafast" mode for GPT-6.1 Sol with Nvidia's graphics processing units rather than Cerebras' hardware.
Altman addressed the concern directly on X on Friday. "There is some speculation about our partnership with Cerebras," he wrote. "Cerebras is a close partner, and we have a deep engagement pushing on the frontiers of speed." The comments sent Cerebras shares up nearly 3% in extended trading Friday before the larger premarket move Monday.
Even with the recovery, the stock remains well below its post-IPO peak. Cerebras' market capitalization now stands at just over $39 billion, compared with $95 billion at the time of its May Nasdaq debut.
The company went public in May in what the market received as a high-profile listing for an AI hardware challenger to Nvidia. Cerebras sells large computer chips and AI systems designed to run AI models at speeds it claims exceed those of traditional GPUs. Its flagship product, the Wafer Scale Engine 3, is marketed as faster than Nvidia's competing GPU offerings.
The commercial relationship between the two companies predates the IPO. Cerebras signed a $10 billion deal with OpenAI in January to supply 750 megawatts of computing power through 2028, making the partnership a central pillar of Cerebras' revenue outlook.
Analysts at Citi said their view of Cerebras' revenue projections for 2026 through 2028 remains "unchanged" in the wake of last week's news. "We believe frontier-AI labs' latest models would initially roll out on internal chips before running on third-party or Cerebras cloud, so it's too early to read much into it," they said in a note published Friday.
The Citi analysts did flag a longer-term concern. "We believe the stock's ability to outperform is increasingly tied to evidence that gross margins are stabilizing," they wrote. "Any further delay in the gross margin trough would likely weigh on sentiment, particularly given Cerebras' premium valuation."
Monday's premarket move reflects just how sensitive Cerebras' share price has become to signals — positive or negative — from OpenAI, its largest disclosed customer. With the $10 billion supply agreement extending through 2028 and gross margin trajectory still in question, investor attention is likely to remain fixed on whether Altman's reassurance translates into continued chip deployments or remains a public-relations buffer around a shifting hardware strategy.
Jay Goldberg is a staff writer at TechEchelon covering technology, markets, and policy. He files the breaking news and deal coverage that move the publication's core desks.
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