Investors focus on earnings miss and margin pressure as AI chipmaker unveils multi-billion-dollar deals with OpenAI and AWS
Shares of Cerebras Systems (CBRS) fell more than 9% in after-hours trading Tuesday after the AI chipmaker reported mixed first-quarter 2026 results. While the company exceeded Wall Street’s revenue expectations, investors appeared concerned about an earnings miss and guidance pointing to weaker profit margins in the coming quarters.
Cerebras generated $193.4 million in revenue during the quarter, surpassing analyst estimates of $180.8 million and representing a 94% increase from a year earlier. Revenue also grew 13% sequentially, highlighting continued demand for the company’s wafer-scale AI accelerator technology. However, the company reported earnings of $0.22 per share, missing consensus expectations of a $0.16 per-share loss. Cerebras posted a GAAP net loss of $14 million, while its non-GAAP loss narrowed to $2.5 million.
The results marked the company’s first earnings report since its record-breaking semiconductor IPO in May, which raised $6.4 billion. Cerebras ended the quarter with $3.3 billion in cash and investments, providing significant resources to support future expansion.
Management sought to reassure investors with two major partnership announcements. The company revealed a multi-year agreement with OpenAI valued at more than $20 billion and introduced Codex-Spark, a high-speed coding model developed jointly with OpenAI. Cerebras also announced a strategic partnership with Amazon Web Services to expand AI inference capabilities globally.
Despite these developments, investors focused on projected gross margin compression, which is expected to fall to 36%-38% in the second quarter from 47% in Q1, creating near-term concerns about profitability.
