Cerebras Systems has become the clearest public read on the OpenAI inference build-out. The wafer-scale AI chipmaker on August 12 posted second-quarter revenue of $180.1 million, up 74% year over year, and lifted its 2026 core revenue outlook to $880-$890 million on the back of a nearly quadrupled cloud business.
Cloud Business Nearly Quadruples
GAAP cloud and services revenue reached $126 million in the quarter, up 281% from a year earlier, while core cloud revenue rose 287% year over year to $127.7 million. Cerebras said cloud and services now represents roughly 70% of quarterly sales, reflecting a channel shift toward hosted inference as customers rent capacity rather than buy CS-3 systems outright.
OpenAI Anchors The Ramp
The bulk of the acceleration traces to Cerebras' $20 billion multi-year deployment for OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol Max inference tier that runs at 750 tokens per second, one of the fastest commercial LLM endpoints in production. CEO Andrew Feldman told analysts core revenue more than doubled to $210 million as OpenAI, AWS, AMD and CrowdStrike deployments ramped, with disaggregated inference slated for Amazon Bedrock in Q1 2027.
Guidance And Backlog
Cerebras raised its full-year 2026 core revenue outlook to $880-$890 million from a prior range of $855-$865 million and told investors it plans to more than triple revenue in 2027, a target it backs with $25.4 billion in remaining performance obligations. The company reported a GAAP loss of $2.98 per share against a consensus of -$0.18, but $377 million of that was non-cash stock-based compensation booked after its June IPO.
Stock Slips On Revenue Miss
Shares fell more than 13% the morning after the release as the $180 million top line came in below the $194 million consensus, echoing the same growth-versus-expectations tension that hit TSMC's July revenue report. Analysts noted disaggregation to Amazon Bedrock and continued AMD-Cerebras integration should widen the addressable market before the 2027 tripling target.
Reporting based on coverage from 24/7 Wall St., CNBC and StockTitan.