KEY POINTS
- AI chip stocks sold off hard late last week amid AI spending jitters, but the move looks overdone, and the sector rebounded on Monday.
- Cerebras (NASDAQ: CBRS), a fast-growing Nvidia rival, jumped more than 20% on Monday as analysts began coverage with buy ratings.
- It recently turned a net profit, with revenue up 76% to US$510m and a US$20 billion-plus OpenAI deal, though it leans heavily on a few large customers.
- You can’t buy Cerebras on the ASX, but BrainChip (ASX: BRN), Weebit Nano (ASX: WBT) and Archer Materials (ASX: AXE) are local plays on the same trend, all high-risk and early-stage.
Just last Friday, it looked like the great AI chip trade was finally running out of steam. The Nasdaq fell more than 4% in its worst day since April 2025, and around US$1.3 trillion was wiped off chip stocks in a single session. Yet only weeks earlier, an AI chipmaker called Cerebras had stormed onto the Nasdaq in the biggest float of 2026, and this week investors piled straight back in. We believe that tells you something important: the demand driving AI hardware hasn’t gone away.
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What Cerebras’ Debut Really Tells Us
Cerebras (NASDAQ:CBRS) makes giant “wafer-scale” AI chips, which are single chips far bigger than a normal processor, built to train and run AI models quickly. That may sound technical, but the point is simple: it is one of the few companies offering a genuine alternative to Nvidia.
When it was listed in May, the float was a blockbuster. Shares were priced at US$185, opened at US$350, hit an intraday high of US$385 and closed their first day at US$311.07, up 68%, raising about US$6.38 billion.
The business behind the hype is real, too. Revenue jumped 76% in 2025 to US$510 million, and the company swung to a US$237.8 million net profit after losing nearly half a billion dollars the year before. It has also signed a multi-year deal with OpenAI worth more than US$20 billion to supply 750 megawatts of computing power through 2028. For a young chip company, that is rare revenue visibility.
The shares have been wild since. They ran above US$380, slid into the low US$200s, then surged more than 20% on Monday, 8 June, as Wall Street analysts began coverage with buy ratings. The message we take from this is clear: even after Friday’s scare, big money still wants AI compute exposure.
What It Means for ASX Investors
You can’t buy Cerebras on the ASX, but Australia has its own small cluster of AI-hardware hopefuls riding the same wave.
BrainChip (ASX:BRN) designs “neuromorphic” chips, which are processors built to mimic the human brain so gadgets can run AI on very little power. Weebit Nano (ASX:WBT) develops next-generation computer memory that it licenses to chipmakers. Archer Materials (ASX:AXE) is working on quantum-computing chips.
Here’s the important catch. Unlike Cerebras, these are tiny, early-stage companies with little or no revenue today. They offer leverage to the AI hardware story, but they are speculative and can swing hard on a single announcement. In our view, they suit growth investors who can stomach the volatility, not anyone after steady, low-risk returns.
The Investor’s Takeaway
The bigger picture is what counts. Friday’s sell-off was about stretched valuations and interest-rate fears, not collapsing demand. Cerebras’ debut, its OpenAI deal and Monday’s wave of buy ratings all point the same way: the AI build-out is still in full swing. That said, Cerebras itself isn’t risk-free. About 86% of its 2025 revenue came from just two UAE-linked customers, a heavy concentration for a company now valued in the tens of billions. For ASX investors, the broader trade keeps the local chip names interesting, but we’d treat them as high-risk bets on a powerful trend rather than safe ways to play it.
