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.



OpenAI to Raise $40 Billion to Boost AI Efforts

A keyboard is placed in front of a displayed OpenAI logo in this illustration taken February 21, 2023. (Reuters)
A keyboard is placed in front of a displayed OpenAI logo in this illustration taken February 21, 2023. (Reuters)
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OpenAI to Raise $40 Billion to Boost AI Efforts

A keyboard is placed in front of a displayed OpenAI logo in this illustration taken February 21, 2023. (Reuters)
A keyboard is placed in front of a displayed OpenAI logo in this illustration taken February 21, 2023. (Reuters)

OpenAI said on Monday it would raise $40 billion in a new funding round led by SoftBank Group at a $300 billion valuation to advance AI research, expand computational infrastructure and enhance its tools.

SoftBank would provide 75% of the funding, according to a person familiar with the matter, with the remainder coming from Microsoft, Coatue Management, Altimeter Capital and Thrive Capital.

OpenAI said it looks to deliver increasingly powerful tools for the 500 million people who use ChatGPT every week.

Investor enthusiasm for the artificial intelligence sector has surged significantly in recent years, driven by widespread adoption of chatbots and the emergence of sophisticated AI agents.

Enterprises have integrated AI solutions to streamline their operations and enhance customer experiences, while venture capital firms compete to back promising AI startups.

San Francisco-based OpenAI had closed a $6.6 billion funding round in October, which valued the company at $157 billion. The new funding round would nearly double the valuation of the AI startup.

"OpenAI has very ambitious plans on many fronts and needs a lot of capital to achieve these goals," D.A. Davidson & Co analyst Gil Luria said.

"The list of investors wanting to support that scope has shrunk and may be largely limited to SoftBank, which itself may not have the necessary capital."

OpenAI is partnering with SoftBank and Oracle to establish a network of data centers under the $500-billion Stargate project, aimed at powering artificial intelligence workloads in the United States.

Microsoft-backed OpenAI also plans to revamp its structure, saying it would create a public benefit corporation to attract more investment and resources while balancing shareholder interests with public benefits.

OpenAI must transition to a for-profit company by the end of the year to secure the full $40 billion funding led by SoftBank, a person familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

With the latest funding, OpenAI will join the ranks of the most valuable private companies, such as SpaceX, China's ByteDance and Stripe.