Key Highlights

  • Cerebras Systems shares are trading at $182.13 in Monday's session, up 9.43%, on Volume nearly double average.
  • OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said Cerebras is a close partner with a deep engagement on the frontiers of speed, easing worries from last week.
  • The stock fell about 20% last week after a research report said OpenAI would run a fast GPT-6.1 Sol tier on Nvidia chips, and a 19.4 million share lockup expired on September 30.
  • Shares remain below the $185 IPO price from May.

An Altman Post Calms a Week-Old Scare

Cerebras Systems (NASDAQ:CBRS), the Sunnyvale, California maker of AI computing systems built around a wafer-sized processor, is rebounding in Monday's session. The shares are up 9.43% at $182.13 on volume nearly double average, recovering part of last week's slide.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman described Cerebras as a close partner and said the two are deeply engaged on pushing the frontiers of speed. The reassurance targets last week's trigger: a research report said OpenAI would run the fast tier of its GPT-6.1 Sol model on Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) graphics chips, which helped drive a roughly 20% selloff to the stock's lowest price since its debut.

Brokerages Call the Selloff Overdone

Several brokerages pushed back on last week's drop. One called the selloff overdone, another kept a $300 target, and a third upgraded its view on the stock. Analysts at one bank said their Revenue outlook for 2026 through 2028 is unchanged, arguing that frontier AI labs would likely roll out new models on internal chips before running them on third-party or Cerebras cloud, so it is too early to read much into the report.

A Lockup Expiry and the IPO Price Frame the Pressure

A 19.4 million share lockup expiry on September 30 added to last week's pressure. At $182.13 the shares remain below the $185 IPO price from May, and they trade more than 50% below their 52-week high of $386.34.

The Business itself is growing quickly. Second-quarter revenue reached $209.9 million, up 103% from a year earlier, cloud revenue rose 281% on a GAAP basis, and remaining performance obligations stood at $25.4 billion. The Nasdaq Composite is at a record and a technology sector fund is near its 52-week high.

If Gross Margins Stabilize the Rebound Has Evidence; If the Trough Drags On, the Premium Is Exposed

If gross margins stabilize and OpenAI keeps expanding its use of Cerebras systems, the rebound has evidence to stand on. The January agreement calls for 750 megawatts of computing power through 2028, and the large obligations Backlog gives the revenue story a long runway.

If margins keep slipping, or more labs route their fastest inference to other chips, the premium valuation leaves little cushion. The bank analysts say the stock's ability to outperform is increasingly tied to proof that gross margins are stabilizing, and any further delay in the trough would likely weigh on sentiment.