Cerebras' IPO last week was a dream. 10 years in the making — and a lifetime of work before that. Everyone can have a crazy dream. But getting the chance to pursue it seriously is a privilege earned over years of work. For me, that took more than 20 years building three foundations: 1. Knowledge of the field You can’t bluff deep technical knowledge. When we started Cerebras, VCs brought in some of the best CTOs in the world to grill us for a week straight. It was the longest interview of our lives. You have to put in the years — electronics, mechanical engineering, thermodynamics — until the fundamentals become second nature. 2. A strong track record By the time we started Cerebras, all the founders had gray hair. We’d spent nearly a decade building systems together at companies like AMD and SeaMicro. Investors backed us because they had already seen what we could build. Trust is earned long before the pitch deck. 3. People willing to believe in you Not everyone gets this. I was lucky. Andrew Feldman, Gary Lauterbach, Michael James, and Sean Lie believed in me — and I believed in them. We complemented each other’s strengths. When I came in with crazy ideas about how to build, package, power, and cool a chip the size of a dinner plate, they listened. Once you have people like that around you, the work becomes bigger than yourself. The team pushes the vision further than any one person could alone. And then, slowly, results start to compound. Ten years later, you’re ringing the Nasdaq bell.
Huge congratulations, Jean-Philippe! A well-deserved culmination of incredible engineering craftsmanship. Your point on the unbluffable nature of deep technical fundamentals hits home. Everyone talks about AI software, but the absolutely monumental feat of engineering required to power, package, and cool a wafer-scale engine is where the true foundation of the AI era is built. Trusting the compounding nature of hard engineering over a decade is inspiring. Onward!
Such a great story and so true. It takes resilience and perseverance to get to this point but it is worth it !
BRAVO à vous Jean-Philippe Fricker, à vos équipes, à votre famille et les familles de vos équipes. Cette IPO ’est le résultat de milliers d’heures invisibles et de tous ces micro‑choix quotidiens de continuer à y croire, malgré les “non”, les doutes et les obstacles. 👏
Amazing accomplishment. I love that at some point you probably said to yourself - screw it lets just do the full wafer
Congratulations JP and this very huge achievement and being an inspiration for others to build great stuff.
You should post up some stories on biggest challenges and how you faced them. Would love to read them👊
Bravo JP!! Well said with one exception - you were NOT lucky. You earned everything you created through hard work, diligence and care 🙏 Congrats to all your achievements my friend!
There’s something powerful about seeing a 10-year belief finally become visible to the world. Most people only see the IPO moment… not the years where it probably felt uncertain, exhausting, or too early. That kind of persistence changes people.
The older I get, the more I realize strong teams are often built on long-term trust, not just talent.