Cerebras CEO Feldman says margin forecast was 'misunderstood' as stock plummets after earnings

Summary

Cerebras Systems CEO Andrew Feldman defends the company's first post-IPO earnings after the stock dropped 15%. He argues the gross margin guidance was misunderstood, pointing to record revenues, a beat, raised full-year guidance, and massive demand from OpenAI, AWS, and many other customers. The temporary margin pressure comes from renting back equipment to meet surging compute demand, and the AWS collaboration is not yet in forecasts. Feldman portrays the underlying business as strong and demand as enormous.

• Cerebras reported record quarterly revenue of $191 million and beat gross margin expectations.
• Full-year revenue and core gross margin guidance were both raised by about 10 points.
• The margin guidance drop reflects a deliberate choice to rent back equipment from a large customer to satisfy huge token demand.
• The company has a $20B+ contract with OpenAI, a $1B contract with G42, and a new definitive collaboration with AWS.
• The AWS deal involves building a combined hardware solution for high-throughput inference and is not yet in any forecast.
• Demand is described as enormous from dozens of customers across many industries, including GSK, US DOE, Figma, Block, and Alpha.
• The stock’s post-earnings decline is attributed partly to a misunderstood margin story and a lockup expiration that was staggered rather than a single cliff.