Cerebras Systems Inc (NASDAQ: CBRS) shares fell 13.01% to $219.21 on Tuesday, joining a broad slide in chip stocks triggered by rising energy costs and bond yields. The decline reflects heightened investor sensitivity to inflation risks, which narrow the Federal Reserve’s room for rate cuts and force heavier discounting of future earnings for growth names.

Market Drivers: Oil and Yields

Crude prices jumped Monday night after President Trump refused to extend Iran’s temporary ceasefire, with Tehran signaling a shift toward a more aggressive military footing. Investors interpreted this as a threat to shipping lanes through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical chokepoint for global oil trade.

Brent crude pushed past $91 a barrel, while WTI climbed to $84.85. Natural gas prices also inched up, pointing to broader upward pressure on energy costs. This dynamic manifested clearly in bond trading Tuesday, with the 10-year Treasury yield climbing to 4.74% and the two-year hitting 4.19%.

Growth names are particularly sensitive to this shift because much of their valuation rests on earnings expected years down the road. Rising yields make investors discount those future profits more heavily today.

Sector Headwinds

South Korea’s government denied reports that SK hynix Inc (NASDAQ: SKHY) was negotiating a semiconductor project tied to the country’s $350 billion U.S. spending pledge. Memory-chip peers slid in sympathy with SK Hynix, weighing on the broader semiconductor sector.

Technical Levels

Despite the decline, Cerebras has not broken its underlying uptrend. Shares sit roughly 2.1% above their 20-day moving average of $216.53 and about 5.3% above their 50-day average of $209.88. The 20-day line remaining above the 50-day line points to a bullish setup on paper, though Tuesday’s selling is testing that signal.

The relative strength index sits at 51.11, a neutral reading indicating the stock is not overextended in either direction. This suggests Cerebras will likely need buyers to step in and defend a level rather than bouncing purely because it is oversold.

Traders are watching two key levels:

• Resistance at $228.50, where rebounds have tended to lose steam following sharp down sessions.
• Support at $196.50, a level below the current price where buyers have shown up before.

Cerebras Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CBRS) and IREN Ltd. (NASDAQ: IREN) recorded significant share price appreciation over the past five trading sessions, climbing 9.55% and 15.90% respectively. The parallel movement in these stocks is linked to their inclusion in the portfolio of Situational Awareness LP, a hedge fund managed by Leopold Aschenbrenner that focuses on physical infrastructure supporting artificial intelligence.

The fund’s Q2 13F filing, reported as of June 30, revealed a public equity portfolio valued at $20.24 billion. Within this portfolio, Situational Awareness held 9.5 million shares of IREN, valued at $433.25 million. The filing also disclosed a newly initiated stake of 10,000 shares in Cerebras Systems, valued at $2.21 million.

What the Numbers Show

A divergence exists between the fund’s share count adjustments and the resulting portfolio value changes for IREN. While the number of IREN shares held by Situational Awareness decreased by 19% from Q1 to Q2 (falling from 11,698,835 to 9,474,099), the total value of the holding increased by 8% (rising from $401,036,000 to $433,250,000). This indicates that the stock price appreciation outpaced the reduction in share count during the period.

For Cerebras Systems, the fund established a new position of 10,000 shares in Q2, up from zero in Q1, representing a new investment of $2,210,000.

Operational Catalysts

Recent stock performance was also driven by specific operational announcements. On August 13, IREN announced the successful delivery and acceptance of "Horizon 1," a 50MW direct-to-chip liquid-cooled AI cloud deployment for Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT). This milestone is part of a five-year, $9.7 billion contract between the two companies. Additionally, IREN achieved "NVIDIA Exemplar Cloud status" on NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 following site testing.

Simultaneously, Cerebras announced it is powering "Ultrafast," a new API tier for OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol model, which runs up to 14x faster than standard processing. OpenAI has committed to utilizing 750MW of Cerebras capacity through 2028.

Performance Overview

Both stocks have shown strong momentum over various timeframes. IREN shares are up 128.03% over the past year and 18.88% year-to-date. Cerebras, which was listed on May 14, 2026, is down 28.01% since listing but has gained 45.77% over the past month.

Despite a severe market contraction in July that led to high-leverage margin unwinds and the acquisition of Situational Awareness’s equity positions by Citadel LLC, the thesis around owning physical AI compute and power assets continues to drive independent momentum in these names.