Silicon Valley's blockbuster $5.55 billion debut signals a coming wave of AI listings — and South Korea is riding the same wave.
AI chipmaker Cerebras Systems made a thunderous entrance on the Nasdaq Thursday, surging 68% on its first day of trading to close at $311.07; far above its already-elevated IPO price of $185 a share
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, South Korean memory chip giant SK Hynix was closing in on a $1 trillion market valuation, a reminder that the AI investment story is no longer confined to Silicon Valley.
Cerebras sold 30 million shares late Wednesday, hauling in $5.55 billion, CNBC reported. If underwriters exercise their option to purchase an additional 4.5 million shares, total proceeds could swell to $6.38 billion. At Thursday's close, the company carried a market value of roughly $95 billion.
The stock opened at $350, some 89% above the IPO price, briefly touching $386 before trading was halted. It ultimately settled lower but still delivered a first-day gain that left much of Wall Street wide-eyed. Strong investor demand earlier in the week had already forced the company to lift its price range to $150 to $160 a share from an initial $115 to $125.
According to the Wall Street Journal, many investors who sought shares in the IPO received nothing and were forced to buy in the open market, while funds that did secure allocations received far fewer than they requested.
Instant billionaire
For co-founder and CEO Andrew Feldman, the stock market debut means his roughly 5% stake combined with options is now worth approximately $3.4 billion, according to Forbes, which reports that co-founder and CTO Sean Lie also enters the billionaire ranks, with stock and options valued at around $1.9 billion,
Cerebras claims its hardware is faster and cheaper than Nvidia's industry-standard GPUs for inference workloads, meaning the computing power required to run AI models in real time rather than train them.
The newly-listed firm’s revenue jumped 76% last year to $510 million, and the company swung to a net profit of $88 million from a loss of $481.6 million the prior year, according to CNBC.
However, Nvidia was also in favor by investors during Thursday’s session with CEO Jensen Huang currently in Beijing with President Trump. The chipmaker will report its latest earnings on May 20 after the closing bell.
Meanwhile, Reuters reported that SK Hynix, the South Korean memory chip manufacturer, ended the trading session with a market capitalisation of approximately $942 billion — within touching distance of the $1 trillion milestone. That would make South Korea the first nation outside the United States to host more than one trillion-dollar company, following Samsung Electronics, which crossed the threshold recently.
SpaceX IPO
The Cerebras IPO may yet be surpassed in 2026 with OpenAI and Anthropic both expecting public offerings in the second half of the year.
Meanwhile, Elon Musk's SpaceX which absorbed AI company xAI earlier this year is aiming for a share sale soon, with rumors that it could publish its prospectus as early as next week and suggestion of a potential record-breaking IPO target of up to $75 billion.
The current record for an IPO was set in 2019 when Saudi oil company Aramco raised $25.6 billion.
