Cerebras Systems Inc (NASDAQ: CBRS) shares surged 11.58% to $261.95 on Wednesday as investors positioned for the AI chipmaker's second-quarter earnings report, scheduled after the market close. The stock's momentum reflects strong market confidence in the company's strategic partnerships with hyperscalers like OpenAI and Amazon Web Services (AWS), despite expected margin pressure.
Wall Street analysts project a second-quarter loss of 17 cents per share on revenue of $194.20 million. This figure aligns closely with Cerebras' own guidance of approximately $194 million in core revenue, issued alongside first-quarter results. If met, this would represent an 88% year-over-year increase from the prior year period. The results would build on a first quarter where core revenue reached $191.3 million, up 12% sequentially and 92% year-over-year.
What the Numbers Show
A significant divergence exists between Cerebras' top-line growth and its profitability trajectory. While core revenue is projected to surge 88% year-over-year, gross margins are expected to contract sharply. The company guided core gross margin to 36% to 38%, down from approximately 47% in the first quarter. This margin compression is attributed to reliance on costly third-party capacity while bringing additional data-center capacity online.
Partnership and Capacity Highlights
The partnership with Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ: AMD) remains central to the narrative. Announced in July, the collaboration splits AI inference tasks: AMD’s Helios rack-scale systems process prompts and large context windows at high throughput, while Cerebras’ Wafer-Scale Engine handles latency-sensitive token generation. This setup, termed “disaggregated inference,” sees Helios systems set to deploy in Cerebras data centers in the second half of 2026.
| Keyword: |
Probability: |
Context: |
| AMD: |
96% |
Partnership announced in July for disaggregated inference. |
| Disaggregated: |
90% |
Refers to splitting AI inference between systems. |
| Helios: |
89% |
AMD’s rack-scale systems for high-throughput processing. |
| AWS: |
94% |
First hyperscaler to deploy Cerebras systems; revenue expected in 2027. |
| OpenAI: |
94% |
Holds a 750-megawatt, multi-billion-dollar inference agreement. |
| Europe: |
86% |
Targeting 200 megawatts of capacity by end of 2027. |
| CrowdStrike: |
76% |
Using Cerebras inference for Falcon AI Detection product. |
| Bell Canada: |
56% |
Tenant at planned 300-megawatt data center campus in Saskatchewan. |
The first quarter’s biggest headline was Cerebras’ new agreement with OpenAI, a multi-year deal valued at more than $20 billion under which OpenAI will deploy 750 megawatts of Cerebras’ inference computing capacity. The two companies also co-launched Codex-Spark, a coding model built for near-instant responses. Cerebras separately began a multi-year partnership with AWS to scale fast inference computing, under which AWS’s Trainium 3 chips will handle prefill processing while Cerebras’ CS-3 systems run decoding.
Technical Levels to Watch
CBRS is trading well above its short-term trend markers, sitting about 27% over the 20-day SMA at $207.43 and about 26% over the 50-day SMA at $208.82. That positioning shows strong upside extension compared with the recent consolidation zone. Even so, the 20-day SMA is still below the 50-day SMA, which keeps the longer-term trend repair process unfinished even as price moves higher.
MACD is offering the clearest read on momentum. It is above its signal line and the histogram is positive, which points to improving momentum compared with the previous downswing. In simple terms, MACD above the signal line suggests sellers are losing influence and buyers are gaining control even if the broader trend has not fully shifted.
From a levels standpoint, the stock is sitting near the midpoint of its 52-week range, which spans from $160.81 to $386.34. After a swing low in June and a swing high in May, the current move looks like a continuation attempt off that June base. Trend-focused traders will be watching to see if price can stay above the short-term averages long enough to eventually flip the 20-day and 50-day relationship back to bullish.
- Key Resistance: $386.34
- Key Support: $208.82
16
Access 50+ Readymade Screeners 
Use 200+ Custom Filters 
Get Full Market Insights 
