Cerebras Systems Inc.
Company History
Cerebras History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 2015 in Sunnyvale, California
When was Cerebras founded?
Cerebras was founded in 2015 in Sunnyvale, California by Andrew Feldman, Gary Lauterbach, Sean Lie, Michael James and Jean-Philippe Fricker, making it 11 years old.
- Founded
- 2015
- Founding place
- Sunnyvale, California
- Founders
- Andrew Feldman, Gary Lauterbach, Sean Lie, Michael James and Jean-Philippe Fricker
- Headquarters today
- Sunnyvale, California, United States
- Milestones documented
- 9 (2015–2026)
- Current CEO
- Andrew Feldman
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2015 | Cerebras Systems Founded in Los Altos |
| 2019 | Unveiling of the Historic Wafer-Scale Engine 1 (WSE-1) |
| 2021 | Launch of WSE-2 & $250M Series F at $4.0B Valuation |
| 2023 | Condor Galaxy Multi-Exoflop Supercomputer Alliance with G42 |
| 2024 | Debut of WSE-3 with 4 Trillion Transistors (TSMC 5nm) |
| 2024 | Launch of Cerebras Inference Cloud (1,800+ Tokens/Sec) |
| 2024 | Cerebras Files Public S-1 Registration for Nasdaq IPO |
| 2025 | Series G at $8.1 Billion Valuation |
| 2026 | Nasdaq IPO as CBRS |
- Where was Cerebras founded?
- Cerebras was founded in Sunnyvale, California in 2015.
- Who founded Cerebras?
- Cerebras was founded by Andrew Feldman, Gary Lauterbach, Sean Lie, Michael James and Jean-Philippe Fricker.
- When did Cerebras start?
- Cerebras was founded in 2015.
- How old is Cerebras?
- Cerebras is 11 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
In 2015, Andrew Feldman and his team of top chip architects realized that AI required moving large amounts of data, but traditional computer chips were simply too small, forcing the data to slowly travel across wires between chips. They had a radical, seemingly impossible idea: what if we just didn't cut the silicon wafer? The entire semiconductor industry laughed at them, stating that a single flaw would ruin the large chip, and the heat would literally melt it. Feldman ignored the critics, raised large venture capital, and successfully built the largest computer chip in human history.
Founders
Andrew Feldman
Andrew Feldman co-founded Cerebras Systems in 2015. After selling his previous server company to AMD, he recognized that traditional CPUs and GPUs were fundamentally bottlenecked by data transfer speeds when training massive AI models. As CEO, he championed the audacious, highly contrarian idea of building a 'Wafer-Scale Engine' (WSE)—a single, massive computer chip the size of an entire silicon wafer—to completely eliminate communication bottlenecks between processors. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Gary Lauterbach
Gary Lauterbach co-founded Cerebras Systems. Widely considered one of the most brilliant silicon architects in the world, he solved the massive, decades-old physical challenges of wafer-scale integration—specifically figuring out how to bypass inevitable manufacturing defects and deliver power across a massive, unbroken 8.5-by-8.5 inch square of silicon. Gary Lauterbach was born in 1961.
Sean Lie
Sean Lie is a co-founder and Chief Hardware Architect at Cerebras Systems. A prodigy in digital logic design, Lie architected the internal 2D mesh fabric of the Wafer-Scale Engine, connecting 900,000 independent AI processor cores with line-rate, low-latency inter-core communication. Lie invented the hardware-level defect tolerance algorithms that allow the WSE-3 to automatically route around flawed silicon dies during power-up, solving the yield problem that had baffled the global semiconductor industry for over four decades. Lie's architectural skill was central to overcoming the 50-year-old 'wafer yield impossibility' that destroyed previous semiconductor pioneers. By conceiving a hardware-level defect tolerance system featuring redundant cores and a reconfigurable 2D mesh, Lie ensured that microscopic silicon defects do not destroy the wafer. At Cerebras, Lie directs overall silicon microarchitecture, instruction set design, and next-generation packaging technologies with TSMC. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Michael James
Michael James co-founded Cerebras Systems alongside his former SeaMicro colleagues. As Chief Architect of Advanced Technologies, he was responsible for designing the highly specialized compiler software required to take standard AI models (written in PyTorch or TensorFlow) and successfully distribute them across the millions of cores on the massive Cerebras Wafer-Scale Engine. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Jean-Philippe Fricker
Jean-Philippe Fricker is a highly accomplished systems engineer and a co-founder of Cerebras Systems. Like the rest of the Cerebras founding team, Fricker was a key, foundational member of SeaMicro, where he served as a senior hardware engineer designing high-density server architectures. When the team departed AMD to launch Cerebras in 2016, Fricker took on the immensely complex task of engineering the physical systems, power delivery, and cooling infrastructure required to house the Wafer-Scale Engine. Because the WSE generates thousands of watts of heat across a single piece of silicon, Fricker's highly innovative system-level engineering was absolutely critical in transforming the theoretical wafer into a functional, deployable AI supercomputer. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Key Milestones
Cerebras Systems Founded in Los Altos
Andrew Feldman, Gary Lauterbach, Sean Lie, Michael James, and Jean-Philippe Fricker founded Cerebras in stealth mode.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgUnveiling of the Historic Wafer-Scale Engine 1 (WSE-1)
Shocked the semiconductor industry at Hot Chips by revealing the world's first wafer-scale chip (1.2T transistors, 400,000 cores).
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLaunch of WSE-2 & $250M Series F at $4.0B Valuation
Released 7nm WSE-2 with 2.6 trillion transistors and 850,000 cores, raising $250 million led by Alpha Wave Ventures.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgCondor Galaxy Multi-Exoflop Supercomputer Alliance with G42
Announced historic partnership with UAE's G42 to build Condor Galaxy, one of the world's largest AI supercomputers.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgDebut of WSE-3 with 4 Trillion Transistors (TSMC 5nm)
Unveiled WSE-3, delivering 125 petaflops of AI compute and 900,000 cores on a single 300mm silicon wafer.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgLaunch of Cerebras Inference Cloud (1,800+ Tokens/Sec)
Launched cloud inference platform, setting global records by generating 1,800+ tokens per second on Llama 3.1 70B.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgCerebras Files Public S-1 Registration for Nasdaq IPO
Filed its first Form S-1 for a Nasdaq listing under the ticker CBRS in September 2024, disclosing that G42 supplied 87% of first-half 2024 revenue; the filing was withdrawn in 2025.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgSeries G at $8.1 Billion Valuation
Cerebras raised $1.1 billion in September 2025 at an $8.1 billion valuation.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgNasdaq IPO as CBRS
Priced 30 million shares at $185 on May 13, 2026, raising $5.55 billion, and closed its first day of trading up 68% at $311.07.
Source: cnbc.comKeep researching Cerebras
Cerebras Company History FAQ
When was Cerebras Systems founded and in what secret facility did it begin?
Cerebras Systems was founded in 2015 in Sunnyvale, California, by Andrew Feldman and four former SeaMicro colleagues, operating in stealth mode for nearly four years to solve the fundamental physics of wafer-scale computing.
When did Cerebras unveil the world's first Wafer-Scale Engine (WSE-1)?
In August 2019 at the Hot Chips conference, Cerebras unveiled the WSE-1 (16nm, 400,000 cores, 1.2 trillion transistors), notable the global technology community with the first working whole-wafer chip in human history.
When was the Cerebras WSE-2 launched?
In April 2021, Cerebras launched the WSE-2, manufactured on TSMC's 7nm process, doubling the specs to 850,000 AI cores, 2.6 trillion transistors, and 40 gigabytes of on-chip SRAM.
When did Cerebras introduce Weight Streaming for multi-trillion parameter AI models?
In August 2021, Cerebras unveiled Weight Streaming technology, disaggregating compute and memory to allow CS-2 clusters to train neural networks with up to 120 trillion parameters without manual model partitioning.
When did Cerebras announce its mega-supercomputer partnership with G42?
In July 2023, Cerebras and G42 announced Condor Galaxy 1 (CG-1), a 4-exaflop AI supercomputer in California, followed by CG-2 in Texas and CG-3, creating one of the largest AI computing networks on earth.
When was the 5nm Wafer-Scale Engine 3 (WSE-3) launched?
In March 2024, Cerebras launched the WSE-3, built on TSMC's 5nm process with 4 trillion transistors and 900,000 cores, powering the flagship CS-3 AI supercomputer.
When did Cerebras launch Cerebras Inference and break global LLM speed records?
In August 2024, Cerebras launched its public Inference Cloud, demonstrating speeds over 1,800 tokens per second on Llama 3.1 70B, over 16x faster than Nvidia H100 GPU clouds and setting a new world record.
When did Cerebras go public?
Cerebras first filed for an IPO in September 2024, withdrew that filing in 2025, refiled in April 2026, and began trading on Nasdaq as CBRS on May 14, 2026 after raising $5.55 billion at $185 per share.
When was Cerebras founded?
Cerebras Systems was founded in 2015 by Andrew Feldman and a team of ex-SeaMicro engineers. They operated in absolute stealth mode for years before shocking the industry by unveiling the world's largest computer chip.
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