Cerebras Shares Rise After Chipmaker Lifts 2026 Sales Outlook and Confirms Microsoft Pact

Shares of Cerebras Systems rose 11.7% to $109.19 on Friday morning after the artificial intelligence chipmaker raised its annual financial guidance and confirmed an infrastructure agreement with Microsoft. The stock move followed the company's third-quarter earnings report, which highlighted an accelerating transition toward selling wafer-scale compute capacity as a cloud service.

The market reaction reflects investor focus on the Sunnyvale, California-based company's capacity to convert customer demand for high-speed AI inference into recognized revenue. Cerebras closed the quarter with $26.1 billion in remaining performance obligations—a contractual backlog roughly 27 times its projected revenue guide for 2026—positioning physical data center deployment and manufacturing throughput rather than customer acquisition as the central operational test for its business.

During the third quarter ended September 30, GAAP revenue grew 55% year over year to $210.8 million, while core revenue, which excludes pass-through data center expenses and customer warrant adjustments, rose 70% to $230.9 million. Cloud and other services accounted for approximately two-thirds of total revenue, with GAAP cloud sales climbing 265% from a year earlier to $141.9 million. Cerebras posted a GAAP net loss of $161.2 million, widened from $22.2 million in the prior-year quarter, while non-GAAP core gross margin reached 41%.

On the company's earnings call, Chief Executive Andrew Feldman confirmed an agreement to provide cloud computing capacity to Microsoft, as first reported by Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/cerebras-stocks-jump-11-70-184432186.html?.tsrc=rss) via GuruFocus. Commercial terms were not disclosed, and management stated that detailed plans would be shared next year. The arrangement adds to existing hyperscaler and enterprise commitments, including an integration with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure slated for 2027.

Spurred by cloud demand, Cerebras lifted its full-year 2026 core revenue forecast to between $940 million and $960 million, up from its previous outlook of $880 million to $890 million. For the fourth quarter, the company guided core revenue to $310 million to $330 million, representing a sequential increase of 38.6% at the midpoint. Management also reiterated its forecast that annual revenue will triple in 2027.

Converting that pipeline will depend heavily on infrastructure execution. Cerebras reported 700 gross megawatts of data center capacity under contract through 2027 and noted plans to scale hardware manufacturing capacity tenfold by the end of 2026 with production partners Flex and Sanmina. Even after Friday's advance, shares remain well below the $185 price set in the company's May initial public offering, leaving investor confidence linked directly to whether fourth-quarter deliveries match the revised guidance.