Cerebras Launches AI Inference Tool to Challenge Nvidia

Cerebras Systems logo is seen in this illustration taken March 31, 2023. (Reuters)
Cerebras Systems logo is seen in this illustration taken March 31, 2023. (Reuters)
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Cerebras Launches AI Inference Tool to Challenge Nvidia

Cerebras Systems logo is seen in this illustration taken March 31, 2023. (Reuters)
Cerebras Systems logo is seen in this illustration taken March 31, 2023. (Reuters)

Cerebras Systems launched on Tuesday a tool for AI developers that allows them to access the startup's outsized chips to run applications, offering what it says is a much cheaper option than industry-standard Nvidia processors.

Access to Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) - often via a cloud computing provider - to train and deploy large artificial intelligence models used for applications such as OpenAI's ChatGPT can be difficult to obtain and expensive to run, a process developers refer to as inference.

"We're delivering performance that cannot be achieved by a GPU," Cerebras CEO Andrew Feldman told Reuters in an interview. "We're doing it at the highest accuracy, and we're offering it at the lowest price."

The inference portion of the AI market is expected to be fast-growing and attractive - ultimately worth tens of billions of dollars if consumers and businesses adopt AI tools.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company plans to offer several types of the inference product via a developer key and its cloud. The company will also sell its AI systems to customers who prefer to operate their own data centers.

Cerebras' chips - each the size of a dinner plate and called Wafer Scale Engines - avoid one of the issues with AI data crunching: the data crunched by large models that power AI applications typically won't fit on a single chip and can require hundreds or thousands of chips strung together.

That means Cerebras' chips can achieve speedier performances, Feldman said.

It plans to charge users as little as 10 cents per million tokens, which are one of the ways companies can measure the amount of output data from a large model.

Cerebras is aiming to go public and filed a confidential prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission this month, the company said.



EIB to Allot 70 Bln Euros for Tech Sector in 2025-2027

FILE PHOTO: The logo of the European Investment Bank is pictured in the city of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, March 25, 2017. Reuters/Eric Vidal/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the European Investment Bank is pictured in the city of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, March 25, 2017. Reuters/Eric Vidal/File Photo
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EIB to Allot 70 Bln Euros for Tech Sector in 2025-2027

FILE PHOTO: The logo of the European Investment Bank is pictured in the city of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, March 25, 2017. Reuters/Eric Vidal/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: The logo of the European Investment Bank is pictured in the city of Luxembourg, Luxembourg, March 25, 2017. Reuters/Eric Vidal/File Photo

The European Investment Bank is likely to announce on Friday plans to pump 70 billion euros into the development of European technology firms over the next three years, EU officials said.

The program, called Tech EU, is meant to help Europe compete with China and the United States in the race for innovative clean and digital technologies.

The EIB, the biggest multilateral lender in the world with a balance sheet total of 556 billion euros, expects its own 70 bln euros to mobilize a further 250 billion euros of private cash as investors crowd into projects supported by the EIB, Reuters quoted EU officials as saying.

The 70 billion is to be split into 20 billion euros for equity and quasi-equity, 40 billion euros for loans and 10 billion for guarantees in 2025-2027, the officials said.

The plan is to complement European Commission efforts to support higher risk ventures and innovative companies throughout their investment journey, from proof of concept to an initial public offering.

The EIB wants to focus on supercomputing, artificial intelligence, digital infrastructure, critical raw materials, green industries such as offshore wind, health, security and defense technologies, robotics and advanced materials, the officials said.