Arm and SoftBank tried to buy Cerebras weeks before its $34B IPO
What's the deal? Arm Holdings and its majority owner SoftBank made a last-ditch attempt to acquire AI chip firm Cerebras Systems just weeks before its initial public offering — and were turned down. Cerebras is set to price its shares on Wednesday in what would be the largest US IPO of 2026, with a valuation of around $34B.
The company is selling 30 million shares and could raise roughly $4.8B. It has been guiding investors to expect pricing above its marketed range of $150 to $160, as demand surges.
Why now? Cerebras has built serious momentum heading into the offering. Amazon said earlier this year it plans to use Cerebras chips alongside its own Trainium processors, and OpenAI released its first model running on Cerebras hardware in February.
The company's pitch centres on wafer-scale technology — chips made from a single disk of silicon, far larger than conventional GPUs — that it says can run AI workloads faster and more efficiently than Nvidia's dominant offerings. That positioning as one of few credible Nvidia challengers has fuelled investor appetite.
For SoftBank and Arm, acquiring Cerebras before it hit the public markets would have locked in a strategic AI chip asset at a potentially lower price. The rebuff suggests Cerebras believes it can extract more value — and independence — through the IPO route.
What could go wrong? Going public as an Nvidia challenger is a bold bet. Nvidia's ecosystem advantages in AI training are enormous, and Cerebras will need to prove its technology can scale commercially beyond marquee partnerships. Public market investors tend to be less patient than private backers if growth stalls.
There's also the question of whether SoftBank walks away entirely or comes back with a richer offer post-IPO. A renewed bid could create uncertainty for new shareholders.
The signal: The approach underscores just how aggressively big tech players are trying to lock up AI chip capabilities. SoftBank has been on an AI infrastructure spending spree, and Arm's involvement signals it sees wafer-scale computing as a potential complement — or threat — to its own architecture.
The fact that Cerebras chose the public markets over a deep-pocketed acquirer reflects a broader pattern: AI hardware companies believe their standalone valuations have room to run. With AI infrastructure investment showing no signs of slowing, the appetite for non-Nvidia chip plays is only growing — and Cerebras is betting the public markets will reward that ambition more than a buyout ever could.
Source: Bloomberg.
