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Benchmark Capital has committed at least $225 million to AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems as part of a massive $1 billion funding round that closed in early February 2026. The round values Cerebras at about $23 billion; that's about 3x its valuation just six months earlier.
This $225 million investment doesn’t come directly from Benchmark’s usual venture fund. Instead, the firm raised two special-purpose investment vehicles, both called Benchmark Infrastructure, and they're made for the purpose of investing more in Cerebras without exceeding its normal fund size limits. Notably, Benchmark originally backed Cerebras at a much earlier stage.
That support led to its $27 million Series A round in 2016, and this latest move shows a significant escalation of confidence in the company’s future. Cerebras is not a typical semiconductor startup. It builds extremely large, highly specialised AI chips known as Wafer Scale Engines (WSE). WSE is bigger and more powerful than standard graphics processing units (GPUs) used by most AI systems.
The flagship wafer-scale chip measures about 8.5 inches per side and contains about 4 trillion transistors and about 900,000 specialised cores designed to handle massive AI workloads. It's also built for the purpose of eliminating performance bottlenecks that come from splitting AI work across many smaller chips. When these bottlenecks are erased, the chip can process large AI models faster and more seamlessly than many conventional systems currently do.
Benchmark is known for a disciplined investment strategy that keeps its flagship funds relatively small. Historically, it was under about $450 million. Because of that policy, it usually avoids large growth-stage checks. But for Cerebras, it chose to raise separate capital outside its main funds. That’s a strong signal that the firm sees exceptional potential in the company.
Cerebras's strategic partnerships and IPO plans
Cerebras’ valuation skyrocketed to about $23 billion in the latest round, up from roughly $8.1 billion just months earlier. This jump reflects intense investor interest in AI infrastructure and the growing demand for compute systems that can power large-scale AI models. In addition to that, the company recently signed a multi-year agreement with OpenAI. The partnership, which is worth more than $10 billion, will make Cerebras supply up to 750 megawatts of compute capacity to OpenAI through 2028.
The 750 megawatts of supplies make the deal a major endorsement and commercial validation of Cerebras's technology. The partnership also helps the company diversify its customer base and reduce earlier revenue concentration issues tied to a single major customer, a situation that at one point had complicated its public-offering plans. Notably, the company, which had once paused its plans for an initial public offering (IPO) due to regulatory reviews linked to foreign investment, is now preparing for a public debut in the second quarter of 2026.
The latest funding round and high-profile customer commitments have helped clear the path toward that goal.
The surge in AI adoption is driving unprecedented demand for computing power, pushing specialised hardware into the spotlight alongside software and cloud services. Cerebras has emerged as one of the few credible challengers to Nvidia’s dominance in AI hardware that is offering a distinct technology which appeals to high-end users with large-scale computing needs. Despite the capital-intensive nature of the sector and its slower scaling compared to software, investors such as Benchmark are showing growing confidence in long-term bets on AI infrastructure.
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