Cerebras boosts FY2026 forecast, expects 2027 revenue to triple as backlog hits $26bn

Cerebras Systems posted record sales for the third quarter and lifted its full-year guidance in its first earnings report since going public. Strong growth in its AI cloud segment offset a drop in hardware sales, and chief executive Andrew Feldman said he expects revenue to triple in 2027. Revenue climbed 55% year on year to approximately $211 million for the three months ended 30 September. The company's adjusted "core" metric, which excludes certain items, increased 70% to roughly $231 million.

Cerebras is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. It designs specialised computing systems for artificial intelligence and markets itself as a competitor to Nvidia. Its flagship product is a wafer-scale chip — a single processor roughly the size of a dinner plate, produced from an entire silicon wafer, whereas rivals cut each wafer into many smaller chips. The company claims this architecture makes its systems especially fast at inference, the process of running trained AI models to answer queries. It sells the systems outright and, increasingly, leases their computing power through its own cloud service. Cerebras listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker CBRS this year.

That pivot to cloud is now fuelling the business. In its third-quarter release, Cerebras said revenue from cloud and other services more than tripled to about $142 million. Hardware revenue declined to approximately $69 million, down from roughly $97 million a year earlier. The company reported a GAAP net loss of about $161 million, or 67 cents a share, but generated core net income of around $30 million.

For the fourth quarter, Cerebras forecasts core revenue of $310 million to $330 million, core gross margin of 47% to 49% and an operating margin near breakeven. For the full year, it expects core revenue of $940 million to $960 million. It disclosed a backlog of roughly $26 billion and around $7.8 billion in cash and short-term investments. New deals include an Oracle cloud integration scheduled for 2027 and two hyperscaler wins.

The primary risk is Cerebras's reliance on a handful of customers. It depends on a small number of large clients, including OpenAI. To convert that backlog into revenue, it also needs to deliver approximately 700 megawatts of data centre capacity by the end of 2027.

These figures reinforce the narrative that demand for AI inference is spreading beyond Nvidia to specialist chip makers. They provide the AI infrastructure space with another sign that expenditure is rotating from model training to running models. The gap between GAAP and core profitability will be scrutinised by investors still pricing a recent IPO, and a GAAP loss alongside core profit often leads to volatile trading in the early stages. Peers in AI cloud capacity and data centre power may also benefit from the scale of the backlog and capacity build-out.

Earlier:

• Applied Materials beats on Q4 and guides above forecasts as chip equipment demand holds
• Cisco beats and lifts FY27 view as AI revenue from hyperscalers set to more than double

Cerebras is evolving from a wafer-scale chip vendor into an AI cloud provider, carrying a $26bn backlog and a pledge to triple revenue next year. It now must deliver on both fronts.

Summary:

• Q3 revenue rose 55% to around $211m, and core revenue rose 70% to around $231m
• Cloud and other services revenue more than tripled to around $142m, while hardware revenue fell to around $69m from about $97m
• GAAP net loss widened to around $161m, or 67 cents a share, while core net income was around $30m
• Q4 core revenue guidance is $310m to $330m, with core gross margin of 47% to 49%; full-year core revenue is seen at $940m to $960m
• Backlog of around $26bn and about $7.8bn in cash and short-term investments
• New deals include an Oracle cloud integration due in 2027 and two hyperscaler wins; the CEO expects revenue to triple in 2027