Cerebras vs Groq: Revenue, Profit and Business Model
Cerebras reported $510M of revenue in FY2025 and $87.9M of net income. Groq does not publish annual revenue.
Latest financial snapshot
Financial summary
Cerebras
Cerebras reported revenue of $510 million in 2025, up about 76% from roughly $290 million in 2024, and swung to net income of $87.9 million from a $485 million loss. After its May 2026 IPO it began reporting 'core revenue', which excludes pass-through revenue and amortization of customer warrant assets. Q1 2026 core revenue was $191.3 million (up 92%), and Q2 2026 core revenue was $209.9 million (up 103%), against GAAP revenue of $180.1 million. Q2 GAAP net loss was $450.5 million, mostly from $386.6 million of stock-based compensation tied to the listing. Management raised 2026 core revenue guidance to $880-890 million and guided Q3 to $214-216 million. Remaining performance obligations stood at $25.4 billion.
Groq
Groq is private and does not report revenue or profit. What is public is its funding: a $300 million Series C in 2021, a $640 million Series D in August 2024 at a $2.8 billion valuation led by BlackRock, a $750 million round in September 2025 at a $6.9 billion post-money valuation led by Disruptive, and a $650 million round in June 2026 led by Disruptive and Infinitum at an undisclosed valuation. Separately, Nvidia's December 2025 non-exclusive license was reported at about $20 billion, Nvidia's largest deal to date. Revenue figures circulating online are estimates, not company disclosures.
Revenue and profit by year
Cerebras
| Year | Revenue | Net income | Margin | Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | $510M | $87.9M | 17.2% | +75.7% | Source |
| FY2024 | $290.3M | -$485M | -167.1% | +268.9% | Source |
| FY2023 | $78.7M | — | 0.0% | — | Source |
Groq
Groq does not publish annual revenue. What is known about its finances is in the summary above.
Full Groq financialsWhere the revenue comes from
Cerebras
- Cloud & Other Services (Fast Inference)
~61% of Q2 2026 core revenue
Per-token API fees and dedicated capacity contracts for running AI models on Cerebras systems in leased data centers, led by OpenAI. $127.7 million in Q2 2026.
- Hardware Systems
~39% of Q2 2026 core revenue
Sales of CS-3 systems and clusters to sovereign AI programs, universities, national labs, and enterprises. $82.1 million in Q2 2026.
Groq
- GroqCloud token usage
Pay-per-token fees from developers and companies running models on GroqCloud.
- Dedicated and on-premises capacity
Enterprise and sovereign contracts for reserved capacity or GroqRack systems.
- Technology licensing
One-time non-exclusive license to Nvidia in December 2025, reported at about $20 billion.
Business model and strategy
Cerebras
How it makes money
Cerebras makes money in two ways. First, it sells hardware: CS-3 systems built around the WSE-3 chip, bought by sovereign AI programs, national labs, universities, and enterprises that want to own their compute. Second, and now larger, it sells cloud and services: customers pay to run models on Cerebras systems hosted in data centers it leases, either through per-token inference APIs or dedicated capacity contracts.
Growth strategy
Cerebras' growth strategy centers on fast inference. It is building out leased data center capacity to serve OpenAI and other model providers, distributing its service through Amazon Web Services under a March 2026 agreement, and pricing low-latency token generation at a premium to GPU clouds.
Competitive advantage
Cerebras' edge is its wafer-scale architecture. A GPU cluster splits a model across many chips and spends time and energy moving data between them over external links. The WSE-3 keeps 900,000 cores and 44 GB of SRAM on one piece of silicon, so weights and activations move across the wafer at 21 PB/s.
Groq
How it makes money
Groq makes money by selling AI inference. Most customers pay per million tokens to run open-weight models (such as Llama, Qwen, Kimi and Whisper) through GroqCloud, an OpenAI-compatible API with a free tier and paid developer and enterprise plans. Larger customers buy dedicated capacity or on-premises GroqRack clusters.
Growth strategy
Since the Nvidia deal, Groq's strategy is to grow GroqCloud as a neocloud: add data center capacity across regions, sell dedicated and sovereign capacity to large customers, and run a mix of its own LPUs and Nvidia systems.
Competitive advantage
Groq's edge was speed. Because the LPU keeps model weights in on-chip SRAM and its compiler schedules every operation ahead of time, GroqCloud consistently ranked among the fastest providers in independent token-per-second benchmarks.
Questions about Cerebras vs Groq
Which company has higher revenue — Cerebras Systems Inc. or Groq, Inc.?
Cerebras Systems Inc. reported $510.0M (FY2025). A verified revenue figure for Groq, Inc. was not available at the time of this comparison.
What is the market cap of Cerebras Systems Inc. vs Groq, Inc.?
Cerebras Systems Inc. has a market capitalisation of $46.3B. A public market cap figure for Groq, Inc. was not available (it may be privately held).
Which is more financially efficient — Cerebras Systems Inc. or Groq, Inc.?
Cerebras Systems Inc. generates $720k / employee in revenue per employee. A comparable figure for Groq, Inc. requires matching employee and revenue data from the same reporting period.
How do Cerebras Systems Inc. and Groq, Inc. make money?
Cerebras Systems Inc. and Groq, Inc. generate revenue in fundamentally different ways. Cerebras Systems Inc.: Cerebras makes money in two ways. Groq, Inc.: Groq makes money by selling AI inference.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Cerebras vs Groq overview