Cerebras Stock Sits Near $165, Below Its $185 IPO Price, After Lockup Expiry and a Disputed OpenAI Hardware Report

Since Cerebras Systems priced its IPO at $185 on May 13 and opened at $350 the next day, the stock has given back its entire debut premium and now trades under the offer price.

The last confirmed close in the record is $166.43 on Friday, Oct. 2, the fifth straight session lower. Shares have since hovered around $165, about 11% below the IPO price and roughly 47% under the $311.07 first-day close. One analyst, writing on Seeking Alpha, put the post-IPO peak near $386.

U.S. markets are closed for the weekend, so those are the most recent levels.

Three events in one day

The break under $185 began Sept. 30. The stock had closed at $194.95 the day before. It fell 8.9% on Sept. 30 to $177.65, then another 4.58% on Oct. 1 to $169.52. That is a 13% drop in two sessions.

Three things landed together on Sept. 30. The post-IPO lockup ended at 6 a.m. Eastern, making up to 19.4 million shares held by directors, officers, employees and other early holders eligible for sale. Two executives filed notices of planned sales. And SemiAnalysis claimed that the "Ultrafast" tier of OpenAI's GPT-6.1 Sol model runs on Nvidia GPUs at a low batch size, not on Cerebras hardware.

No source has tied the price drop to any one of the three.

The insider filings

Chief Operating Officer Dhiraj Mallick filed a Form 144 to sell 396,000 shares, worth about $77.9 million. Chief Financial Officer Robert Patrick Komin Jr. filed to sell 32,500 shares, worth about $6.39 million. Together that is roughly $84.3 million.

A Form 144 states an intent to sell, not a completed sale. Only Mallick's Form 4, filed Sept. 30, confirms an executed trade: his shares sold Sept. 29. It shows the sale was made under a Rule 10b5-1 plan he adopted June 30, 2026. Such plans are set up in advance, so the filing does not show what he thinks of the OpenAI report. The proceeds went to him, not to the company.

Against 112.2 million shares outstanding, the two notices are small next to the 19.4 million shares that came free to trade.

The OpenAI question

OpenAI is central to the Cerebras story. It signed a multi-year deal for 750 megawatts of Cerebras wafer-scale capacity, valued at more than $10 billion. Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman said on the Aug. 12 earnings call that OpenAI would remain a big part of the business next year.

The SemiAnalysis claim is narrow. It concerns one tier of one model. Cerebras's own site still says it powers an earlier tier, GPT-5.6 Sol Ultrafast, and OpenAI has previously confirmed that tier ran on Cerebras. The claim does not cancel the 750-megawatt contract.

OpenAI has not said which hardware serves the GPT-6.1 tier. Altman posted on X late Friday, Oct. 2: "There is some speculation about our partnership with Cerebras. Cerebras is a close partner, and we have a deep engagement pushing on the frontiers of speed." The post did not name the hardware behind the new tier. Shares rose nearly 7% in overnight trading on it, but they were back around $165 in recent trading.

The business behind the stock

The company is growing fast. It reported 2025 revenue of $510 million, up 76% from $290.3 million, and net income of $237.8 million against a loss of about $482 million the year before.

Second-quarter revenue was $180.1 million, up 74%. Core revenue, a non-GAAP measure, rose 103% to $209.9 million. Cerebras guides to $880 million to $890 million of core revenue for 2026, and it ended the quarter with $8.6 billion in cash and $25.4 billion in remaining performance obligations, meaning contracted revenue not yet recognized.

The valuation leaves less room for error. 24/7 Wall St. calculated the stock at 68 times trailing sales and 217 times forward earnings at the $177.65 level. It concluded that "the risk outweighs the reward until the picture clears," because a customer base this concentrated makes any shift in OpenAI's spending a threat to the top line.

The other side comes from the analysts tracking the stock. According to 24/7 Wall St., ratings stand at three strong buy and seven buy, with an average price target of $291.64. Seeking Alpha contributor Joseph Montezuma says roughly 80% to 85% of the revenue consensus through mid-2028 is already signed. He values the stock at about $253 if capacity is built on schedule and $144 if the ramp slips a few quarters.

Cerebras is not the only company facing a tougher IPO market. Smart ring maker Oura said Sept. 29 that it delayed its planned IPO, citing "uncertainty in the IPO market."

Montezuma says he is watching two items: Q4 core gross margin and the first 2027 guidance, which will show whether the new capacity is earning its keep. The next earnings report is the first scheduled chance for Cerebras to address the OpenAI question with numbers.