Where Cerebras' monster debut puts in among tech's biggest IPOs

Andrew Feldman, co-founder and chief executive officer of Cerebras Systems Inc., holds the Wafer Scale Engine 3 AI chip during the company's initial public offering (IPO) at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, US, on Thursday, May 14, 2026. Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesCerebras Systems narrowly missed joining Facebook-parent Meta and Alibaba as one of the few companies to have ended its first day trading on Wall Street with a market cap of over $100 billion.The semiconductor company's shares were 68% higher at the closing bell on Thursday, giving it a market cap of about $95 billion.During Alibaba's IPO in 2014, the Chinese tech giant had a market cap of over $231 billion at the close of its first day of trading, eclipsing Facebook's market valuation of roughly $104 billion at the end of its first day when it went public in 2012.Alibaba generated $5.5 billion in revenue in the year before its IPO, and Facebook had sales of $3.7 billion. Cerebras is substantially smaller, having reported $510 million in revenue in 2025. However, in January, the company signed a multiyear deal with OpenAI worth over $20 billion, and in March started a partnership with Amazon Web Services.Read more CNBC tech newsCerebras soars in Nasdaq debut, topping $100 billion market cap after blockbuster IPOXi tells Musk, Tim Cook and other CEOs on Trump's trip: China will 'open wider'Chinese companies are ramping up homegrown AI chips, even if Nvidia is coming backMicrosoft feared being too dependent on OpenAI, Musk-Altman trial testimony revealsAlthough Coinbase reached a market cap of $100 billion when it went public in 2021, that figure dropped to 85.8 billion on a fully diluted basis at the closing bell.Coinbase's revenue in the year before its IPO was $1.28 billion, but in the quarter just before its offering, the company said revenue surged ninefold from a year earlier to $1.8 billion, as traders flocked to cryptocurrencies.Cerebas' big IPO potentially paves the way for more blockbuster market debuts this year from companies like SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic.WATCH: Cerebras IPO is a huge success and plays into chipmaker strength.