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Cerebras Shares Fall After First Earnings as CEO Cites Misread Margin Outlook

June 24, 2026 at 18:43 EDT

Infra & Chips
Funding & M&A
Foundation Models

AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems (Nasdaq: CBRS) saw its stock fall about 10% after hours following its first quarterly results since its IPO, released on June 23, with shares dropping as much as 14–20% in premarket trading the next day. CEO Andrew Feldman said the market had "misunderstood" the company's full-year margin guidance.

Q1 FY2026 · First Report Since IPO

Cerebras beats on revenue — but a margin warning sinks the stock

Revenue jumped 94% and the loss came in far smaller than feared, yet weak gross-margin guidance sent shares down up to 20% — below the $185 IPO price. The CEO says investors "misunderstood" the outlook.

$193.4M

Q1 revenue, up +94% YoY (vs ~$180M est.)

–$2.5M

Adj. net loss — vs ~$36.75M loss expected

–10 to –20%

Stock drop post-report, below $185 IPO

The sticking point

Gross margin guidance trails its target — and its rivals

37%

Cerebras
Q2 guide

40%

Cerebras
FY26 guide

55%

AMD
mid-50s

60%

Cerebras
LT target

~75%

NVIDIA
mid-70s

Why margins dip — a temporary squeeze

Demand is running ahead of plan, so Cerebras is renting back its own systems from customers to secure capacity — driving a short-term cost spike.

Sell systems to customers

→

Rent them back for capacity

→

Temporary cost rise → margins recover as ramp normalizes

The growth case

$5.55B IPO — 55.5M shares at $185
$20B multi-year OpenAI deal (~750MW)
AWS partnership; capacity scaling fast
Inference cited at ~2,000 tok/s on a 32B model vs ~200 on H100/H200

The caution

Near-term margins below target and rivals
GPU clusters more efficient at large batch sizes
Entry point in seven figures — large labs only
Adoption still limited; sales availability narrow

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