Cerebras vs NVIDIA: Founders, CEOs and History
Cerebras was founded in 2015 by Andrew Feldman, Gary Lauterbach, Sean Lie and is led by Andrew Feldman. NVIDIA was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, Curtis Priem and is led by Jensen Huang.
Company facts
Founders
Cerebras
Andrew Feldman
Andrew Feldman is a highly prominent technology entrepreneur and the CEO and co-founder of Cerebras Systems, a company that has completely revolutionized artificial intelligence hardware.
Gary Lauterbach
Gary Lauterbach is a brilliant hardware architect and co-founder of Cerebras Systems, serving as the primary architectural visionary behind the company's unprecedented Wafer-Scale Engine.
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 i…
Michael James
Michael James is a co-founder and Chief Software Architect at Cerebras Systems. He directs the Cerebras software compiler stack, developing automated graph compilation tools that translate PyTorch and TensorFlow neural networks into physical core topologies ac…
Jean-Philippe Fricker
Jean-Philippe Fricker is a highly accomplished systems engineer and a co-founder of Cerebras Systems.
NVIDIA
Jensen Huang
Nvidia possesses a gritty, prescient founding story, rooted entirely in a specific, technical conversation at a well-known American diner, and driven by a CEO who possessed an unshakable conviction in an unproven computational theory.
Chris Malachowsky
Chris Malachowsky co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and became a central figure in the company's technical foundation.
Curtis Priem
Curtis Priem co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and served as one of the company's original architects.
CEOs and their tenures
Cerebras
- Robert Komin
Chief Financial Officer
Leads finance and investor relations as CFO, reporting Cerebras' first quarterly results as a public company in 2026.
Source - Andrew Feldman2015–present
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
Co-founded SeaMicro and sold it to AMD in 2012 before co-founding Cerebras. Led the company from the first wafer-scale chip in 2019 through the OpenAI compute deal and the $5.55 billion May 2026 Nasdaq IPO.
Source - Sean Lie2015–present
Co-Founder & Hardware Architect
Led the unprecedented hardware engineering required to successfully manufacture the Wafer-Scale Engine, the largest and most complex artificial intelligence processor in history.
Source
NVIDIA
- Jensen Huang1993–present
CEO
Huang has been CEO for more than 33 years, which makes him one of the longest-serving founder-CEOs in the industry. Under him NVIDIA bet early on CUDA and deep learning, bought Mellanox for networking, and moved to a yearly architecture cadence.
Source - Chris Malachowsky1993–2024
Co-Founder
Chris Malachowsky co-founded Nvidia in 1993. As Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations, he played a critical role in developing the early graphics processing architecture and establishing Nvidia's robust engineering supply chain.
Source - Colette Kress2013–present
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
She has been CFO through NVIDIA's growth from about $4B of annual revenue to $215.9B in FY2026, and she leads its quarterly earnings communication with investors.
Source
Timeline: Cerebras and NVIDIA side by side
1993NVIDIA
Founding in Santa Clara
Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem founded NVIDIA on April 5, 1993, with a focus on 3D graphics for gaming and multimedia. The founding set the company on a parallel-processing path long before AI infrastructure became the main market.
1999NVIDIA
GPU Category Defined
NVIDIA introduced the graphics processing unit concept in 1999. The milestone mattered because it framed graphics hardware as a specialized processor, a technical idea that later carried into accelerated computing and AI workloads.
2006NVIDIA
CUDA Opens GPUs to General Computing
CUDA opened GPU parallel processing to scientists, researchers, and developers outside graphics. It became the software foundation that made NVIDIA hardware useful for machine learning, simulation, and other compute-heavy workloads.
2012NVIDIA
AlexNet Shows GPU Value for Deep Learning
The AlexNet breakthrough used NVIDIA GPUs to win the ImageNet competition. The event helped convince researchers and engineers that GPUs could accelerate neural-network training at a scale CPUs could not match.
2015Cerebras
Cerebras Systems Founded in Los Altos
Andrew Feldman, Gary Lauterbach, Sean Lie, Michael James, and Jean-Philippe Fricker founded Cerebras in stealth mode.
2018NVIDIA
RTX Brings Real-Time Ray Tracing to Graphics
NVIDIA RTX brought real-time ray tracing into the company's graphics roadmap. The product line kept gaming and professional visualization tied to AI-enhanced rendering while Data Center was becoming more important.
2019Cerebras
Unveiling 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).
2020NVIDIA
Mellanox Acquisition Adds Networking
NVIDIA completed the Mellanox acquisition for about $7 billion. The deal mattered because large AI and high-performance-computing clusters depend on fast networking between accelerators, not only on individual GPU speed.
2021Cerebras
Launch 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.
2022NVIDIA
Arm Acquisition Terminated
NVIDIA and SoftBank terminated the proposed Arm acquisition because of significant regulatory challenges. The failed deal showed how closely governments watch control points in semiconductor architecture.
2023Cerebras
Condor 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.
2023NVIDIA
Grace CPU Enters Data Center Roadmap
NVIDIA introduced its first data-center CPU, Grace, for large-scale AI and high-performance computing. The milestone expanded the platform from GPUs and networking into CPU-GPU system design.
2024Cerebras
Debut 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.
2024Cerebras
Launch 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.
2024Cerebras
Cerebras 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.
2024NVIDIA
Blackwell Architecture Launched
NVIDIA launched Blackwell as a data-center-scale architecture combining GPUs, CPUs, DPUs, interconnects, switch chips, systems, and networking adapters. The architecture became central to FY2026 Data Center demand.
2026Cerebras
Nasdaq 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.
2026NVIDIA
$215.9B FY2026 Revenue
NVIDIA reported $215.9 billion of FY2026 revenue, $193.7 billion of Data Center revenue, and $120.1 billion of net income. The result showed how far AI infrastructure had moved the company beyond its original PC graphics market.
Acquisitions
Cerebras
No verified acquisitions are listed.
NVIDIA
- Groq (technology license and team)2025Undisclosed
- Run:ai2024$700M
- Excelero2022Undisclosed
- Mellanox Technologies2020$6.9B
- Cumulus Networks2020Undisclosed
- Icera2011$367M
Questions about Cerebras vs NVIDIA
Who is the CEO of Cerebras Systems Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation?
Cerebras Systems Inc. is led by Andrew Feldman and NVIDIA Corporation is led by Jensen Huang. Both serve as the top executive responsible for the company's strategy, operations, and financial performance.
When was Cerebras Systems Inc. founded vs NVIDIA Corporation?
NVIDIA Corporation was founded in 1993 — 22 years before Cerebras Systems Inc., which was founded in 2015. NVIDIA Corporation's longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger Cerebras Systems Inc..
How many employees does Cerebras Systems Inc. have compared to NVIDIA Corporation?
Cerebras Systems Inc. employs approximately 708 people, while NVIDIA Corporation employs approximately 42,000. NVIDIA Corporation has the larger workforce at 42,000 employees, compared to Cerebras Systems Inc.'s 708. A higher headcount does not necessarily imply greater efficiency — it often reflects differences in business model (e.g., manufacturing vs. software).
Where are Cerebras Systems Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation headquartered?
Both Cerebras Systems Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation are headquartered in United States, meaning they operate under the same primary regulatory and tax environment.
Who founded Cerebras Systems Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation?
Cerebras Systems Inc. was founded by Andrew Feldman, Gary Lauterbach, Sean Lie, Michael James, Jean-Philippe Fricker. NVIDIA Corporation was founded by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, Curtis Priem.
Which company has a longer operating history — Cerebras Systems Inc. or NVIDIA Corporation?
NVIDIA Corporation has been operating for approximately 33 years, making it the more established of the two companies. Cerebras Systems Inc. has been in operation for around 11 years. A longer operating history often signals greater institutional resilience and brand recognition, though it can also mean slower adaptation to new market conditions.
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 NVIDIA overview