“Nvidia Challenger” Cerebras (CBRS.US) Q2 performance fell short of expectations, hardware revenue plummeted 23%, and the stock price plummeted 16% after the market

The Zhitong Finance App learned that after the US stock market on Wednesday, AI chip star Cerebras Systems (CBRS.US) announced second-quarter results that fell short of expectations, and the stock price plummeted 16% in response. According to the data, the company's Q2 revenue increased 74% year over year to US$180.1 million. Analysts had anticipated a loss of US$194 million; a loss of US$2.98 per share; analysts had previously anticipated a loss of $0.17 per share.

By business, hardware revenue for the second quarter fell 23% year over year to $54.1 million. This shows that this startup with an innovative chip design architecture is still facing challenges in the commercialization process. However, cloud and other services revenue reached a record high of $126 million, up 281% year over year.

The core gross margin for the second quarter was 41%, an increase of about 940 basis points over the same period last year.

Since its initial public offering in May, Cerebras shares have risen 42%. Cerebras positioned itself as Nvidia's challenger in the field of AI chips, but today its biggest source of revenue is cloud computing services.

Andrew Feldman, CEO of Cerebras, said: “The hardware business will be volatile in terms of the timing of order delivery and revenue recognition. This is due to the nature of the industry.” He added that some customers are currently unprepared to accommodate the data center space needed to accommodate the new computing systems.

Notably, other computing power chip and hardware vendors have experienced strong growth in the last quarter. AMD's sales increased by 50% in the latest quarter, and Intel also achieved a 25% increase. In contrast, Cerebras is still in the early stages of customer expansion and technology promotion, and hardware revenue is relatively unpredictable.

Feldman emphasized that the company remains committed to selling hardware systems and data center services.

Looking ahead, Cerebras expects third-quarter revenue of around $215 million, higher than analysts' average forecast of $212 million; core gross margin is expected to be 38% to 40%, which is also higher than the average analysts' 36% forecast.

The company raised its annual revenue guide to US$880 million to US$890 million. The company's previous forecast was US$855-865 million, while analysts generally expected US$867.6 million. The company also expects core gross margin of 41% to 43% for the full year.

Cerebras' core technology selling point is its unique high-end processor design concept — processing silicon wafers commonly used to manufacture multiple components into a single chip. Cerebras has built a huge data center network and provided computing power rental services to the outside world. The original purpose was to verify the viability of its technology. However, demand for AI computing power is currently strong, making computing power leasing services an important growth engine for the company.