Cerebras Systems (NASDAQ: CBRS) shares fell 3.46% to $116.48 in premarket trading Tuesday, extending losses one day after TD Cowen sharply cut its price target for the artificial intelligence chipmaker while maintaining a Buy rating.
TD Cowen lowered its 12-month target to $175 from $275 in a research note issued before Monday’s market open. The $100 reduction represents a 36.4% cut.
The revised target is $34 below the $209 minimum recorded in an October 5 analyst survey compiled by S&P Global Market Intelligence, although it remains approximately 50% above Tuesday’s premarket share price.
TD Cowen was among the bookrunners for Cerebras’ May initial public offering, which was priced at $185 per share. Its latest target is $10 below that offering price.
Cerebras Shares Lose 15% Over Two Sessions
Cerebras closed Monday at $120.66, down 5.15%, following a 10.52% decline on Friday. The two consecutive regular-session losses erased approximately 15.1% of the stock’s value.
Monday’s trading also pushed shares to a new 52-week regular-session low of $120.12. The closing price left Cerebras about 34.8% below its IPO price, while Tuesday’s premarket price fell below Monday’s intraday low.
Separately, Cerebras Systems Tokenized Stock (CBRSon) traded at $116.53, down 10.09% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. CBRSon and Cerebras’ Nasdaq-listed shares are different financial instruments, and their reported declines use different measurement windows.
OpenAI Hardware Questions Remain Unresolved
The analyst revision comes after several weeks of scrutiny over Cerebras’ commercial relationship with OpenAI.
On September 29, semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis said in a post on X that OpenAI’s GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast inference tier was running on Nvidia GPUs rather than Cerebras’ proprietary wafer-scale processors. The report raised questions about Cerebras’ role in supplying hardware for OpenAI’s latest high-speed AI service.
Cerebras had previously confirmed that its processors powered GPT-5.6 Sol Ultrafast, an earlier version of the service.
OpenAI made the GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast API tier available on October 8 but did not identify the hardware powering it. Neither OpenAI nor Cerebras has publicly confirmed the processor supplier for that tier.
OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman addressed speculation about the companies’ relationship on October 2, describing Cerebras as a “close partner” and saying they remained deeply engaged in advancing AI processing speed. He did not specify the hardware serving GPT-6.1 Sol Ultrafast.
Cerebras’ financial disclosures show why the OpenAI relationship remains important to its business.
Under a multiyear agreement, OpenAI committed to purchasing 750 megawatts of AI inference computing capacity from Cerebras, with deployment scheduled in phases through 2028.
As of June 30, Cerebras reported $25.4 billion in remaining performance obligations, representing revenue allocated to contractual obligations that were wholly or partly unsatisfied, including deferred revenue and amounts expected to be invoiced and recognized as revenue in future periods. The company said a significant amount of that balance was attributable to its OpenAI agreement.