Nvidia Stock Faces a $20 Billion AI Chip Test as Cerebras Heads for IPO

18 April 2026

SAN FRANCISCO, April 18, 2026, 08:33 PDT

Nvidia Corp’s dominance in AI chips faced a fresh market check on Friday, when Cerebras Systems—a direct rival in the AI processor space—unveiled plans for a U.S. IPO and filed for a Nasdaq debut with the ticker “CBRS.” Cerebras’ numbers for 2025 jumped out: revenue climbed to $510 million, up from $290.3 million, and the company flipped to a profit, posting $1.38 per share after last year’s $9.90-per-share loss, according to Reuters. Reuters

The timing’s key as competition intensifies over inference—the grunt work AI systems do to generate answers. Reuters, referencing a report from The Information, said OpenAI reached a deal to pay Cerebras upwards of $20 billion across three years for servers built on Cerebras chips. Reuters noted it hadn’t independently confirmed those details; OpenAI didn’t reply to questions, and Cerebras wouldn’t comment.

There’s a lot riding on this. FactSet’s John Butters said Friday Nvidia is projected to deliver the biggest boost to year-over-year earnings growth—both for the “Magnificent 7” tech cohort and the broader S&P 500 this quarter. Strip out NVIDIA, Butters noted, and that group’s expected earnings growth drops hard, sliding to 6.4% from 22.8%.

Nvidia finished Friday up 1.7% at $201.68, pushing its market cap to roughly $4.53 trillion at the most recent close. Advanced Micro Devices barely budged. Broadcom picked up nearly 2.0%, evidence investors were still wading into the AI-chip trade as the week wrapped up.

Cerebras still lags far behind Nvidia in scale. Nvidia’s revenue for the quarter ended Jan. 25 hit a record $68.1 billion, and the company is looking for $78.0 billion, give or take 2%, in the current fiscal first quarter. That forecast doesn’t count on any data-center compute revenue from China, according to the company.

Nvidia hasn’t limited itself to its core turf; hardware and software from the chipmaker are now reaching into new spaces. Earlier this week, Cadence Design Systems and Nvidia announced a tie-up on AI for robotics. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, speaking at a Cadence event in Santa Clara, put it plainly: “We’re working with you across the board on robotic systems.” Reuters

There’s no one-size-fits-all among Nvidia’s rivals. Cerebras pushes a highly specialized AI system. AMD, for its part, has landed major chip supply agreements with buyers eager to branch out. Broadcom, meanwhile, works with tech giants to craft custom processors—an answer for those balking at Nvidia’s higher price tags.

There’s risk on both sides here. Cerebras needs to convince IPO investors that demand tied to OpenAI can actually translate into a bigger, lasting business. Nvidia, on the other hand, runs up against the slower-moving risk that cloud and AI buyers might start moving some inference jobs elsewhere—chasing speed, lower prices, or simply more leverage. Nvidia would keep its lead, but the next phase wouldn’t be on autopilot.

Nvidia’s fiscal Q1 2027 results land May 20. On the line: proof that appetite for Blackwell and the rest of its data-center lineup isn’t slipping, even as rival hardware crops up in IPO filings, custom-chip pacts, and those cloud procurement negotiations getting more crowded.

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Khadija Saeed is a financial markets reporter at TS2.tech. Her coverage ranges from stocks and technology to emerging industries and developments across global markets. She studied economics and finance at the London School of Economics and worked in market research before becoming a financial journalist. Follow Khadija Saeed on Google News.

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