By Elias Schisgall

Cerebras Systems narrowed its loss and reported revenue nearly doubling in its first earnings release as a public company, but said it expects its margins to remain negative through the end of the year.

The company raised about $5.6 billion in its May initial public offering, fueled by enthusiasm about its flagship Wafer-Scale Engine chip, which is purpose-built for artificial-intelligence models. Its first-quarter results show that enthusiasm is continuing, executives said.

"Our strong financial performance in Q1 highlights the large and rapidly growing opportunity in front of us," Chief Financial Officer Bob Komin said. "We are focused on innovating at the pace of demand, supporting accelerating investments in growth and capitalization on strategic opportunities while effectively managing our capital structure."

But the company said it expects to keep operating at a loss, highlighting the heavy costs of the AI buildout. It projected full-year core operating margins, which exclude certain items, of between negative 28% and negative 32%.

The release comes amid a broader selloff in the tech sector, as investors worry about AI costs and possible rate increases from the Federal Reserve.

Shares in Cerebras fell 8.2% to $208.12 in after-hours trading on Tuesday. The stock closed up 1% at $226.72, down 27% since its IPO.

The company reported a first-quarter loss of $14 million, or 22 cents a share. That compares with a loss of $23.9 million, or 46 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts polled by FactSet were expecting a reported loss of 25 cents a share.

Revenue rose 94% to $193.4 million, beating the $181.2 million analysts were expecting.

Hardware revenue grew 59% to $110.6 million, while revenue from cloud and other services jumped nearly tripled to $82.8 million.

For the current second quarter, the company is expecting core revenue to grow 88% to around $194 million. Core revenue excludes certain items including customer warrant amortization, data-center pass through revenues and costs, and stock-based compensation.

It is projecting full-year core revenue of between $855 million and $865 million, representing 69% growth at the midpoint.

Analysts are expecting full-year revenue of $828 million and second-quarter revenue of $177.7 million.

Write to Elias Schisgall at elias.schisgall@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

June 23, 2026 17:19 ET (21:19 GMT)

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